


Too Many Angels

by tb_ll57



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, OC Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, post - endless waltz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-23 20:20:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1578269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The odds of Preventers making one big, happy family out of ex-Rebels, ex-Ozzies, ex-soldiers were never high.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> _Co-authored with my former writing partner, Marsh, who has since sadly passed away. Originally posted to the internet at large in 2007; I've (I hope) improved as a writer since then, so I've been tinkering with it lately, and the latest revision adds only minor detail for clarity and coherency, not new plot points._

AC 195

 

'You’re killing him,' Will said, when blood spattered his boots like live sparks.

His father was a butcher. That was the memory that kept threatening, the sound of his father crunching bones with the big cleaver, the huge slabs of meat landing with dull smacks on the chopping block.

The boy on the floor squirmed weakly. The grunt that left his lungs was a mindless release of air when Sig kicked him in the ribs again.

Will glanced down the dark corridor behind him. It seemed insane, unreal, that no-one had heard the racket and come to stop them. His skin crawled, his imagination painting a horde of officers, even Commander Une herself, running down the hall with pistols drawn to arrest them all.

One of the boy’s white hands was open, reaching for something, fingers like sticks out of the big magnetic cuffs. Tucker crushed them under his boot.

'You’re going to kill him,' Will repeated. The mantra was a deafening scream in his own mind, but his traitorous voice emerged in a helpless whisper. 'Ortiz, for Christ’s sake...'

The boy tried to curl away. His eyes locked with Will’s.

Sig stepped up, and lifted his foot over the boy’s face. He stomped down, hard.

Everything stopped moving. The men were panting from exertion. Will felt his vision blurring in the darkness, the tight knot of terror in his stomach constricting his chest.

Sig took a lighter from his coat, and lit a cigarette between his lips. 'Gundam scum,' he said. His fist across his forehead left a bloody streak in his sweat. 'Get him back to his cell before anyone notices.'

 

**  
**

 

AC 205

 

'Welcome to the first training session of Preventers Special Operations Team X-09,' Commander Whelan greeted them. The clerk beside him flicked off the lights, and the white screen on the wall lit up with the first slide of a presentation. 'You are all carefully selected representatives of your various companies. You are here because you excel at a particular skill, because your own commanders have highly recommended you, and because you have exceeded all expectations in your past missions. And as of this minute, you will be treated as greenhorns. I don’t know you from Jake, boys, and so I will be testing you stringently to ensure that this team will perform to perfection.'

'I heard he gives the same speech every time,' Kingsley whispered. Those nearest her cracked a smile, but schooled themselves to attention as the clerk raised his head to check for the source of the noise.

Whelan gestured, and his clerk brought up the next slide, an aerial map. 'We are headed to the Sri Lankan border. A group calling themselves the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have claimed responsibility for the assassination of a prominent member of the Cabinet and her family. They have also issued this videoed statement in which they threaten three cities with suicide bombings and attacks on civilian institutions, including the University. They have named specific targets and given us a timeline.' The clerk ran the video on silent on the screen. 'Mills. You’re our military history buff. Tell the team why we’re concerned ourselves with the Tamil Tigers.'

'Sir.' One of the men stood from the third row of desks. 'The Tigers disbanded in 2049, pre-colony, after regional forces killed their leadership in a standoff. They’re an obsolete organisation.'

'Correct.' Whelan waved for the next slide. 'Which is why their sudden reappearance after centuries of inactivity is notable and problematic. We cannot assume that the new Tamil Tigers have the same objectives as the original organisation, which means we cannot assume whom they represent, nor who the individuals responsible for these acts are or where they come from. Our task is to—'

The door opened, spilling light into the room. Everyone turned to look at the intruder, a young man slipping in quietly.

'Sergeant Maxwell,' Whelan said coolly. 'You join us at last.'

Maxwell closed the door behind him, a salute notably lacking as he paused in the glow of the projector. 'Sorry about the time,' he answered.

'Any excuses?' the commander pressed.

'Would you accept any?' Maxwell said cheekily. He tacked on, 'Sir,' a beat too late.

Whelan was frowning. Then he turned back to his team. 'Your pilot,' he told them all shortly. 'Sergeant Maxwell is the man responsible for your safe passage into and out of combat situations. This makes him the least dispensable man on the team. Without a pilot, you are grounded in enemy territory. Take your seat, Maxwell.'

There was only one empty seat. Kingsley waved, to draw attention to their row, and Maxwell headed toward them. He took the chair at the aisle, beside an agent bent studiously over the briefing, hand to his face as he concentrated. Whelan waited pointedly for Maxwell to open his book and set pencil to page before resuming his presentation.

'As I was saying, our task is to locate the cell calling themselves the Tamil Tigers. Once we have done so, we will lead a sting operation, with the objective of destroying their facilities and eliminating their leaders. You have fifteen minutes to study the information we’ve collated for you. We’re meeting on the track. Before we can act as a team, we will train to be one. We have three days before go.' He gathered his papers, and nodded to his clerk. 'Lights on. Let them read.'

The lights brightened. Maxwell thumbed quickly through his report, then turned to the man he shared a desk with. 'Call me Duo,' he said, holding out a hand. 'I was just out running a diagnostic on the new Radar EH-230. She’s a freaking whale. They’ve got to stop letting some idiot general design planes, right? More firepower than wings, which I guess explains why I’m here.' He said it unabashedly, as if he fully expected his reputation to have preceded him. 'Stanley, huh?' he asked, nodding toward the name plate stitched into his uni. 'You go by that like the rest of the meatheads, or you got a name?'

'William, sir.' Stanley pressed Maxwell’s hand quickly and with a damp, nervous palm.

'Duo,' Maxwell reminded him. He released Stanley’s hand when it tugged away, but a thoughtful frown was pulling his brows together. 'We work together before?'

'No, never.' Stanley looked to the opposite side of the room, but it was blank-walled, a simple classroom devoid of any decoration.

'But we’ve met somewhere.' Maxwell stared openly. 'You’re familiar.'

Silence met his statement. Stanley read the mission report, and Maxwell, frowning, followed his lead, but two fingers tapped rapidly on the table between them.

'What are you on the team for?'

Stanley cleared his throat. 'Um. Languages. I'm a translator.'

'That's cool. Whatever they speak in Sri Lanka, huh.'

'Yes, sir. Duo. Sergeant.' He cleared his throat again, eyes darting away. 'Arabic, as well, and, um, French, German, Mandarin.'

'I've got, like, half of English down.' Maxwell flashed him a grin. 'You a newb? Don't be nervous. These commanders, they like to play it tough, like every mission ends in a jungle fight to the death. No lie, we'll probably see combat, but odds are we'll out-think any armed militants before we have to out-gun them. I've worked with Whelan before. He just misses the war. Real army type.'

'I didn't know he was OZ.'

'Alliance,' Maxwell said, and his brows drew together. He opened his mouth, and closed it. Stanley closed his eyes.

'Sir,' he began, and never finished.

Maxwell was on his feet, shoving his chair violently back, abandoning the desk as if launched from it. Stanley flinched away from the noise.

'Commander,' Maxwell said. His voice broke through the murmurs of the rest of the team, who regarded him with surprise. 'Permission to leave.'

Whelan turned from his clerk. 'What? You just arrived, Pilot.'

'And I'm just leaving. Permission to be cut from this exercise, sir.'

Whelan’s mouth dropped open. Behind Maxwell, Stanley drew a deep breath, and came to his feet.

'Sir?' he said. 'I think I'm the problem here. If you'll excuse me from this mission, Maxwell won't need to go.'

Maxwell turned to glare at him. 'I don't need your charity, asshole,' he snapped.

Whelan slapped his brief to the podium. 'No-one's leaving. If you two have a problem with each other, deal with it on your own time.'

'With all due respect, sir,' Maxwell said, 'like hell.'

Whelan narrowed his eyes. 'You're one step from insubordination, soldier.'

'Sir, please.' Stanley broke in. Where Maxwell was pale but for bright spots of fury staining his cheeks, Stanley was red from the collar of his uniform to his sandy hairline. 'I volunteered for this. I'd like to rescind that.'

'Neither one of you is going anywhere!' The men were staring. Whelan levelled a long look about the room, until heads dropped back down where they belonged, busy with the briefs. Whelan waited a moment more, then gestured both Maxwell and Stanley close. They came, Maxwell in a straight-backed stance that all but hummed with rage. Stanley met his commander’s eyes with difficulty.

'I've warned you before, Maxwell,' Whelan said finally, quietly. 'If this is some Gundam Pilot crap about OZ, I'm not having it.'

'Fuck you, Robb,' Maxwell spat, not bothering to lower his own voice. 'And I don't care if you report me.' Whelan sucked in air for one of his infamous booming shouts, but Maxwell didn't stay for it. He simply turned and stalked to the door. It bounced off the wall from the force of his opening it.

'Maxwell!' Whelan yelled.

Stanley licked his lips. 'Sorry,' he said quickly, and hurried after Maxwell.

'Get your asses back here!'

'Sorry, sir!' Stanley saluted from the doorway, and then took off running down the hall. 'Maxwell,' he called. 'Wait. Please.'

Maxwell had longer legs and he was making good progress. He didn’t slow when Stanley called him-- if anything, his steps sped. He cut a quick detour through one of the theatres, Stanley hard on his heels calling vainly for him. The theatre exit put them at a stairwell, and Maxwell clattered loudly down it, and threw himself through the double doors of the men’s locker behind the gymnasium.

Stanley followed him in, and made sure the doors shut behind them. He caught his breath, and said, 'Please, just... could we talk for a minute?'

Maxwell whirled on him, making him jump. Hands connected flat with his chest and shoved him back. 'You take another step and you're talking to my fist!' Maxwell snarled at him.

'Okay. Okay.' Stanley put his own hands up, palms out and open. 'I deserve that. But there's no point getting yourself into trouble over this. Please, just-- just go back there. I'll get out of the assignment.'

'I don't need your helpful advice.' Maxwell’s mouth was pressed into a thin, grim line. He stepped in, this time, slowly crowding Stanley back into a row of lockers. 'Go back to the big boys. They'll protect you. You people always protect each other, huh?'

'My people?' Stanley’s back touched metal, and he stilled.

'Yeah. The ones you were with while they were beating the living shit out of me.' Maxwell was in his face now, close enough for Stanley to feel the heat radiating off him, unable to look away from malevolent eyes glaring him down. 'I remember you,' Maxwell said. 'You were the one at the door. The one who watched the whole fucking time without lifting a finger.'

'That was ten years ago,' Stanley protested weakly. 'There's... the war is over. We're not enemies any more.'

'I am so sick of hearing that. The war's over. Free pass on everything. No-one accountable for god-damn anything because we're all best friends now, right?' His exhale was shaky. 'They weren't handing out memory-wipes on my side at the close of hostilities.'

'I remember,' Stanley said. 'I'll never forget that day. Or my part in it.' He shook his head. 'I'm sorry. I am. Please... Let me make some kind of amends.'

'Amends?' Maxwell repeated sceptically. Suddenly he gave up crowding Stanley. He backed away, stripping out of his jacket as he moved. He ripped the lock off one of the lockers and threw his uniform into it. It clanged loudly when he slammed it shut. 'You want to make amends? Start with this. Kick yourself in the crotch a few dozen times, crack a few ribs, slam your head into the concrete, and break your nose. Do it in secret, so you never get caught, and when Preventers come around recruiting, pretend it never happened and that you don't mind working with liars and thugs. We'll see how it goes.'

'Sir--'

'What happened to the other ones? Are they here too? The one who--'

Where it might have gone from there, neither would ever know. Whelan had found them. Both of them straightened automatically when the commander came storming in, winded from chasing them. Whelan surveyed the distance between them, and Maxwell’s state of undress. Stanley saluted awkwardly; Maxwell stood still, his expression mutinous, his arms defiantly stiff at his sides.

'Maxwell, Stanley, you're on report,' Whelan said. 'Get your butts to Colonel Merquise's office right now. March.'

 

**

 

The parade to Command was excruciating for Will. He’d never been on report before, certainly never so early in an assignment with a new commander. Even if he were reassigned, he knew, word would get out about the scene he’d been a part of.

If anything, the long walk with Commander Whelan through Headquarters, which seemed to take twice as long as Will remembered, gave Maxwell time to stew. He had never seen anyone so poisonously angry before.

Whelan went in first. He wasn’t long. When he came out to fetch them from the hall, he had settled into a severe silence that did not invite questions.

'Go in,' he ordered them.

Colonel Merquise was on his feet by the window, taking advantage of the morning light to read from a thick case file. He set it down when they entered, and gestured them to stand before his large desk. He surveyed them both, and fixed his cool gaze on Maxwell.

'What's this about?' was all he said.

'Requesting reassignment,' Maxwell answered immediately, stiff-backed. 'Personal reasons.'

'Not acceptable.' Merquise folded his arms. 'Not acceptable at all. Explain yourself.'

Will could see Maxwell’s rigid right hand, clenched into a white fist. 'Requesting leave, then,' Maxwell said.

'Denied.' Merquise seemed to think he’d got all he was going to get. He turned to Will. 'Let me guess,' he said. 'You're requesting dismissal from this mission as well?'

Will tore his gaze from Maxwell, wondering at him. It would have been easy enough to explain it, heated as that explanation would have been. But that was twice Maxwell had bluffed past an opportunity to file a grievance that would certainly have resulted in his reassignment, without stain on his record. Too personal? Or did he just not expect any sympathy? Whelan, he'd said, was once Alliance; Merquise OZ and White Fang. No allies. Hesitating, Will did the only thing he could, and kept his own silence. 'Yes, sir. Maxwell would be more an asset to the mission.'

'Like I'm going to fucking go now,' Maxwell muttered.

'You'll stay,' Merquise told him shortly. He looked back to Will. 'You're off the team,' he decided. 'Dismissed.'

Will was relieved. He saluted, putting the proper snap into it, and turned to go.

But Maxwell didn’t budge. At volume, this time, he said, 'I'm not going.'

The look Merquise turned on him promised dire things. 'You heard me,' he said, his voice deceptively soft. 'Stanley's out. You're in.' He paused. 'I think I can guess why the drama. It's unprofessional in the extreme.'

'Unprofessional?' Maxwell repeated disbelievingly. 'I'm supposed to trust a CO who thinks I'm pulling "Gundam pilot crap"? Teammates who've worked with these two more than me? I'm the guy who just got their buddy kicked off the team.'

'You are pulling Gundam pilot crap,' Merquise said. 'Aren't you?'

Maxwell blinked once, no more reaction than that, but Will stepped back on instinct. 'You'll have my resignation tomorrow morning,' Maxwell said flatly.

'Stop this now,' Merquise ordered, though not quite as roughly as before. Concern began to peek through his mask of indifference. 'You're risking your career over ancient history.'

'It's not ancient to me.' Maxwell threw a burning glare at Will, but it encompassed Merquise, too, when his eyes returned there. 'I'm so fucking sick of how everyone around here acts like we're all supposed to be friends. I'm not your friend. I'm not Whelan’s friend, and I'm definitely not his.' He pointed at Will, and finally at himself. 'What I _am_ is not going on this mission.'

'I see.' Merquise stood in a tight-shouldered quiet for several moments. 'Two week suspension,' he said then. 'Effective immediately and with a hold on your status until you apologise to Commander Whelan.'

'I don't owe him an apology.'

'He reports you cussed him out in front of his team and you flagrantly disobeyed a reasonable request to explain yourself, not to mention walking out without permission. You're a soldier just like the rest of us, Maxwell, and you had better behave like it.'

'I'm not a soldier. I'm a Preventer. Just because you all play-act with your salutes and your sirs and your drill-sergeant routines--'

'Three weeks, without pay, and you can apologise to me as well as Whelan.'

Will felt green. 'Sir,' he tried to interrupt. 'This isn't his fault.'

'Not another word,' Merquise barked. 'Either of you.'

Will clamped his jaws shut to stop himself.

Maxwell said icily, 'Anything else?'

It seemed Merquise almost answered. Whatever he wanted to say, though, he kept to himself. 'Go,' was all he murmured. Maxwell was moving almost before it was out of his mouth. Will waited long enough for a proper dismissal.

'Be careful,' Merquise told him, with the door swinging shut on Maxwell. 'Let it end.'

'Sir,' Will said helplessly.

It was nearing noon. The sun was painfully bright outside, reflecting off the white walls of the three-storied Headquarters. The broad parkland that surrounded the compound was in full summer bloom, the lake blue and deep, the woods behind it full and green. Will had eyes for none of it. Maxwell was skittering down the front steps, the metal buckles jigging on his flightsuit sparking light in all directions.

'Wait,' Will called after him, and took off down the steps.

Maxwell didn’t run from him this time. He stopped dead, and actually came back up three stairs, meeting Will half-way up. 'I have nothing to say to you.'

'I didn't know you were going to be on the team,' Will tried to explain. 'I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.'

'You know what I didn't mean?' Maxwell demanded. 'For any of you to live through the war. So I guess it's my fault, huh?'

The bitterness of that hit Will like a physical blow. 'No,' he said again, soundlessly. He cleared his throat. 'It's... no. I'll leave you alone.'

'Good start, genius.'

And then, oddly, Maxwell hesitated. They both swayed, attuned to the same breath of breeze that blew out from the lake.

Then the momentary suspension broke. Maxwell turned his back. Will didn’t call him back this time.


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _'I want an opportunity to be kind to you,' he said._

AC 195

 

Will held out the folded note. 'Personal call,' he explained. 'I think it’s your girlfriend.'

Tony’s face lit up. 'Becca?' He read the note quickly, and cast a longing glance up the hall where Will had come. 'I can’t,' he said reluctantly.

'I can watch for you,' Will offered. 'It’s just skeleton crew. No-one will know if you duck out for a bit.'

'They’ve got the two Asian ones out already. They’re bound to come back eventually.'

'How long have they been gone?' Will asked, leaning against the security console. He knew how long-- he’d been watching from around the corner, and the log sat right atop of the clipboard, 01 signed by Ensign Barton on orders from Colonel Une, and 05 was in isolation for interrogation. Will pointed to the names. 'Come on, you’ve got at least an hour. Plenty of time to say hi to Becca and the baby.'

Tony hesitated. Then, in a rush, he agreed. 'All right,' he said, taking off his key cord and security pass and handing them over. 'The one that’s in there is quiet as a mouse anyway. I’ll be right back. Don’t tell anyone we did this.'

'Sure,' Will nodded. 'I’ll be here.'

The cameras swept the corridors. The base was quiet. Will used the security pass to enter the programme, and turned off the camera facing the cell door.

'All clear,' he called softly.

Ortiz came out first, Tucker and Sig hurrying behind. 'Gimme the key,' Ortiz hissed. He all but ripped it from Will’s hand. 'How long we got?'

'Tony’s a chatterbox,' Will said. He licked his lips. 'Sig...'

'This is our only chance, kid,' Sig told him. Ortiz opened the cell and shone his torch inside. Sig gripped Will by the arm, and put his lips next to Will’s ear. 'You know what these bastards did to our men. This is vengeance.'

Tucker came out of the cell. It was the boy with the long braid. Tucker carried him bodily along, his big hand wrapped over the boy’s mouth. Ortiz followed them with his pistol drawn and aimed at the boy’s head. He was just a boy, younger even than Will, his face already bruised from his capture, blood crusted at his hairline. He resisted, thrashing, but Tucker was twice his size, throttling the boy to limp compliance. Will took the precaution of closing the cell to mask their absence, wiping shaking hands on his uniform.

'Storeroom 14,' Sig said. 'Let’s go. Come on, kid.'

 

**

 

AC 205

 

'This is Maxwell,' Duo repeated into the comm. 'I’ve got two in the water already and it’s getting pretty choppy here. What’s the status of our backup?'

It took a long time for the static to clear. Duo asked twice for a repeat. He could barely spare a hand for the comm; the steering fought him for every centimetre, and he was struggling to keep the nose of the chopper level against the gale-force winds. Another spatter of shots flew out and ricocheted off his windscreen.

 _'Negative,'_ the answer finally came. _'We ca-- You read?'_

'Maxwell!' Ravi ducked his head through the port. 'Line’s fraying! Can you lower us?'

Duo slammed a fist to the console. Everything was going fucking wrong. 'What’s the word on the canon blast?' he shouted back. 'I go any lower and that thing is gonna bounce us out of the atmosphere.'

The stranded ship below them had been in trouble when they’d arrived. They’d had the story, in a jumble of shaking stutters from the first agent they’d rescued out of the ocean. The Preventers crew had surprised a pirate smuggler, and a gunfight on choppy seas had gone all to fuck when the storm hit. The Preventers’ schooner was nothing but driftwood now, and Duo could make out bodies floating in the water through the beams of the chopper’s floodlights. The smugglers had the advantage of firepower, and they were turning all of it on the chopper.

Ravi came back. 'We have to go lower!'

Duo wrenched the bird's nose around. It was getting hard to see out the windscreen, even switched over to night-vision. The storm was whole sheets of rain on them, a constant force pushing them down to the sea. Ravi clung to the back of Duo’s seat as he turned the plane in place. He managed to keep them in position, and began to carefully descend, keeping his eye on the crazy rocking of the mast below his belly.

They brought up another man. Duo had to back away from the wreck below, or let himself be blown back, as it happened. Bullets clanged against the side of the plane and in through the open doors; someone yelled. Duo freed a hand once more for the comm. 'Backup!' he yelled. 'Men in the water. Agents down, repeat, we need backup because we’re going to have to fucking leave them!'

It wasn’t Ravi who came back. It was Johnson. 'Canon!' the agent warned him, grabbing one of the handholds on the ceiling seconds before Duo’s alarms went mad all across the console. 'Hold on--'

The explosion hit the front end of the chopper. Duo’s console burst into flames while the hit threw him back in his chair, the auto-locks on his belts keeping him strapped in while the fire flew around his face. Only experience kept him still through the panic-- his suit was retardant and the sprinklers would come on any moment, but god, he was going to be eaten alive and trapped--

White powder sprayed down from above and the fire finally died, only interminable seconds after it had begun. Duo gripped the steering with hands that hurt, that shook. Somehow he’d stayed level. Johnson wasn’t behind him anymore. He searched for the comm that he’d dropped. It was dead.

'We’re getting out of here,' he called back to the fuselage. 'Everyone latch down.'

The alarms were a constant drone. He couldn’t separate one from the next to take care of first. He didn’t know if they still had a line down there, with the cameras shot and the mics dead. No-one was coming through to the cockpit.

He didn’t see the next canon blast coming, but he felt it. The whole chopper lurched forward from the rudder, spinning them about mid-air. They dropped altitude sharply, steering felt entirely fucking cut, his whole fire-damaged console was blaring at him, and Duo did the only thing he knew wasn’t going to kill them all-- he took the plunge down instead of hauling upright and risking an impact on the water at an angle that would snap the plane in two before they could do anything about it. The waves rushed up at his windshield at a frantic speed. Duo threw the chopper into reverse at the last possible second, spun one-eighty to the right, and slammed back into his seat as he accelerated up and away from the ship below.

 _'Danger,'_ the computer chanted at him. His lights crashed, plunging him into darkness punctuated only by the red emergency glow. _'Abandon ship. Danger. Abandon ship.'_

He scrabbled to release his safety belts. The plastic had melted, but the buckles finally gave. He used them to tie a knot around the steering, tightening until he was sure it would keep trajectory and speed against the winds. He pitched into the walls as he felt his way back through the port to the fuselage, and tripped over a body. He couldn’t find anything that felt like a head, so he just gripped a double handful of flight suit and dragged it after him toward the square of light and noise that were the open bay doors.

Hands grabbed him. Johnson’s voice screamed, 'No more lines! Inflate your jacket!'

He obeyed without question, and tried like hell to find the pull tag on the body that had to be Ravi. 'Where’s the others?'

'Jumped already.' Johnson stood, wobbling crazily. 'Took the raft.' He held out a hand for Duo. 'Come on!'

He couldn’t find the tag. He locked his fingers around Ravi’s belt and hauled him upright into his arms. 'Go!' he shouted, and flung himself out the doors.

He lost his breath falling down into the storm. It seemed to take forever. He hit the water with his shoulders, and then he was drowning, weighed down with Ravi’s body and out of air. He flailed one-armed, kicking with feet that went numb with the cold, scared he was swimming in the wrong direction with everything equally black. If he’d made it this far just to die in the drink he was damned if he wasn’t coming back fucking pissed as shit--

He passed out.

He was floating. He couldn’t feel his hands or legs anymore, but there was a dark mass bobbing near him, staying with him, and he hoped it was Ravi. He couldn’t see anything, but spray pattered over his face every few seconds, so he must have been floating face-up. He was freezing cold.

He woke again. There was light. It wavered over him, blinding him, bright as fire. Flare. Someone with a flare.

'Maxwell!'

He went under briefly while someone grabbed at him. He choked and coughed while they pulled him back up, but awareness had returned. An amphibious face with goggles hovered near him with that flare brightening everything around them, including the cage that was lowering down from a chopper. Backup had finally reached them.

'Agent Maxwell!' the swimmer shouted in his ear. 'Get in the cage.'

He didn’t protest. He let the swimmer shove him in the metal bars while they were tossed about by the waves. 'Where’s my team?' he shouted back.

'We already got four others. You’re the last up!'

There wasn’t time for more questions. The cage jolted as the line snapped tight, and Duo was rising out of the water. He’d been in the cage before, but not since training years ago, and not when he was half hypothermic and sick to his stomach with dizziness. He had to close his eyes when torches shone down on him, and he was sick a little, then, spinning around mid-air. He lay limp until the hellish ride finally ended, and babbling voices pulled the cage onto the new chopper.

They dumped him to the rubber mats. He was sick again, pure bodily reflex—he had nothing to throw up. Someone wrapped a thick blanket around him and coaxed him into a crawl away from the doors. He collapsed onto a cot while his guardian slapped an anti-nauseau patch onto his neck and started stripping off his flight suit.

'You’re burned,' the agent told him. He peeled back Duo’s sleeve carefully, and Duo caught a glimpse of his own arm. He’d been hurt in the cockpit fire after all, and never even felt it. It didn’t feel real yet, even seeing his own skin come sloughing off, stuck to the suit.

'My team,' he said, when he thought he could form the words.

'We got Johnson, Mills, and Epperlie.' The other agent pressed a thermos on him. Duo almost dropped it-- against his chilled skin it felt hot enough to hurt-- and just clutched it awkwardly to his chest. 'We also got Matterlin, from the ship.'

He was so relieved to hear names he knew that he didn’t immediately register the absences. 'Ravi?' he said. 'Wiser? Anyone else from the ship?'

'Two bodies, must be the pirates. If anyone else is down there, we couldn’t find them. I’m sorry.' The agent crouched on the floor and started wrestling Duo’s boots off. 'I know you did everything you could.'

It finally filtered through that he knew the oval of face trying hard not to look up at him. It was Will Stanley.

Who touched the thermos, forgotten in the crook of Duo’s unburned arm. 'You don't have to talk to me,' he said. 'Just... drink it.'

He did. He needed help to do it, skin crawling and not just from the cold, as Stanley's fingers covered his. He picked a point over the man's shoulder. 'You're languages,' he said. 'What are you doing on S&R?'

'I was just available on a late shift. I didn't come after you.' Stanley tossed Duo’s boots aside and began to rub Duo’s bare feet with the hem of the blanket. 'I said I wouldn't. I didn't.'

Another agent joined them, the broad white cross on his back identifying him as a doctor. He seized Duo’s arm, and checked him over with a handtorch. 'You’ll be all right,' he said. 'Let’s get you cleaned up and wrapped.'

 

**

 

'You did everything you could,' Merquise assured Johnson. 'If we’d had a second team ready to go faster, we might have been able to save more men, but that’s not anything you could have changed.'

'Thank you, sir,' Johnson said. He was nursing a sprained ankle, tentatively testing the crutches the doctor had given him. 'Sir, I also want to recommend Sergeant Maxwell. He kept his head. He’s an excellent pilot.'

'I’ll add your comments to the official report.' Merquise dismissed him, and glanced around the conference room. Will jumped when the man’s eyes landed on him.

'You’re allowed to go home,' Merquise suggested. 'Your part was over when you landed safely.'

'Sir.'

The Colonel sighed. He rose, gathering his notes, and crossed to the door, where Will had been trying to hide. 'I understand what you’re attempting to do,' he said, gazing down at Will. 'I don’t know if it’s noble, or just futile, but I feel I ought to warn you that it may well be impossible to reconcile with him.'

Will looked away guiltily. 'I still have to try,' he said softly.

Merquise didn’t answer right away. At last, though, he nodded, and left without saying anything else.

It was the early hours of morning. Base was almost empty; cleaning staff were making their way through the building, unobtrusive in their habits. Will nodded to a woman he knew, headed home from the night shift. He found himself a couch in the lobby, and waited.

It was almost dawn when Maxwell finally emerged from Medical. His arm was a bulky wrap under a grey jumper, and he walked like a man exhausted to the limit of his endurance. Will jumped to his feet, and steeled himself for the sullen look Maxwell turned on him.

There was no way for Maxwell to avoid passing him on the way to the doors, and he didn't try, at least. Maxwell ventured closer one slow step at a time, halted no more than a foot from him, actually, and said flatly, 'Whatever you want, the answer is no.'

Will ignored that. 'Can I give you a ride home?'

That won him a stare. Finally Maxwell shook his head. 'You trying to be my new best friend or something?'

'You need help,' Will said obstinately. 'I'm here.'

He also knew, from a quick trip earlier to the carpark, that Maxwell’s car was a stick shift, and there was no way he could drive with his arm in the shape it was. Moreover, Duo had been so long in Medical that the rest of the team had been sent home, except for the two who were staying for observation. There was no-one else around to make the offer Will was making.

So, grudgingly, Maxwell said, 'Fine.'

Even expecting Maxwell to concede, Will was still surprised he’d actually done it. His stomach turned over nervously. 'Right,' he said. 'My car's this way.'

His compact little car felt smaller with Maxwell inside it, hunched on the passenger seat as if he would be sitting on the outside if it were economical. They were both silent as Will guided the vehicle down the winding road through the park lawns. A sleepy-eyed woman let them through the gate with a wave when Will showed his pass, and Will turned onto the highway.

'Where's your apartment?' he asked Maxwell.

'North twenty miles and left on the water,' Maxwell responded shortly.

He cranked the heat up, until the blast was hot enough to make him sweat. Maxwell did untense just slightly, though, and finally directed one of the vents directly on himself. Will was pleased. 'You'll warm up eventually,' he said.

'Thanks, Mummy,' Maxwell muttered.

Will flushed. 'Shutting up now.'

'God, get your fucking back up.'

'I don't want to fight with you.'

'Then what do you want from me?'

It was, Will thought, the first time Maxwell had asked him an honest question. On a tragic night like this, Maxwell's face pale and drawn, they were finally just two men sitting in a dark car together, not just their pasts and their baggage with them. He knew his behaviour puzzled the other man, and offended him sometimes, but it felt, for a wild moment, like progress.

'I want an opportunity to be kind to you,' he said.

Maxwell exhaled hard, and slumped back in his seat. His head turned toward Will. 'This may be a radical notion,' he replied, 'but it's not that easy to make up for the past.'

'I know.' Will’s palms were sweaty. He wiped them, one after the other, on his trousers, and gripped the steering wheel hard. 'I know I can never take back what happened, or fix how I failed you. I just-- I'm trying to show you... I'm not your enemy now.'

Maxwell was pale in the dawn light. His eyes were washed out, faded. 'It's not that simple. It's not that simple for me.'

Will looked back at the road. 'Would you feel better if I asked for a transfer?'

'You exist.'

Will wiped his hands again. 'Would it help if I didn't?'

Maxwell looked away. 'It's not even remotely about you.'

'What's it about, then?' he asked.

There was a wooden sign pointing down a long drive. There was a cluster of tall houses at the end of it, all lined up at the edge of the marshy ocean where Maxwell had almost lost his life the night before. Maxwell pointed, mutely, and Will eased onto the dirt road. Their destination was an old wooden home, two stories tall, gently worn on the corners. Cheerful blue shutters covered the windows, shielding them from the morning sun. Birds were already out and about, their calls just audible through the noise of Will’s engine, like the gentle wash of the water. It was a good place, Will thought. It looked comfortable. Peaceful. It didn’t look like it could possibly hold such a turbulent, angry man.

Maxwell spoke suddenly, as Will parked. The good hand brushed lank hair from his forehead, came to rest over the red rash of burn where his flightsuit had exposed his throat. 'The other ones. What happened to them?'

'They didn't become Preventers.' Will turned off the car. 'You don't have to be paranoid.'

'What happened to them.'

Will licked his dry lips. 'Tucker-- his name was Hendry Tucker. He was in my company. We were merged with Sig's after the Battle of the Sinai. Sig, I never knew much about him. I think it was his idea. Ortiz, he came in with Sig. They'd lost a lot of men. They--' He tugged at his safety belt, finally released it. 'Sig is dead. Tucker, too. He died at Libra. Ortiz had a medical discharge right before the war ended. I think he's in the colonies. I don't know.'

Maxwell absorbed that, letting the silence stretch longer than even the long ride to his home. The line of orange on the horizon was spreading, chasing out the purple haze of dawn and dew. He didn't move, so Will didn't.

'Did you want me dead?'

Will drew a deep breath. 'I was new.' He spread his hands flat in his lap, fingers wide over his thighs. 'I was scared. I didn't know any of those guys, but they all outranked me.' He stared at the waves just visible between two of the houses. The storm that had claimed all those lives last night was gone now. 'Nothing I can say to you will ever adequately explain it. I wasn't proud of it then, and I'm not now.'

'Did you want me dead,' Maxwell said harshly. 'Because they did, and they would've done it. You just stood there. So did you want me dead.'

'No. I swear that. I... just. I just--'

'Stood there and watched. So you didn't want me dead. You're just a coward.'

'I had to learn that, that day. It's haunted me all this time.' Will clenched his hands, then put his keys in his pocket. 'Can I come up and help you get settled?'

'God! You're not gonna get a fucking prize for making nice.' Maxwell kicked open his door and stepped out onto the sandy drive. He didn’t bother to close it behind him as he went stalking for his porch.

Will did, and closed his own door, too, and ran after Maxwell. He got up the front steps just in time to slip through the open door, and nearly bumped straight into Maxwell. A burning glare sent him back a step, but Maxwell didn’t tell him to get out. He stripped off his jumper, struggling over his injured arm, and flicked on an overhead light that threw the foyer into sharp relief.

'You wanna see my souvenirs from that night?' Maxwell demanded. Will found his back to the wall as Maxwell lifted an arm into his face and presented his white skin. There were bumps all along his ribcage from breaks. A purple scar that didn’t look quite surgical that started under his armpit and curved round to his back. Then he unzipped his jeans and pulled them down, making Will flinch. Exposed, he trailed fingers over the scars on his groin, three of them bisecting the light brown hair, and a freckle-like spots on his belly. Cigarette burns. 'Courtesy of OZ’s finest. How’s that, huh?'

'I'm sorry,' Will said forcefully. 'I am. Do you think I wouldn't take that night back if I could? But you survived. We made it through to the same place, both of us. We can work together. It's what Preventers is about!'

Maxwell’s eyes wouldn’t let him go. Will tried to look away, but they held him, pinned him there, and Maxwell never even touched him. 'You my therapist now?' Maxwell asked softly. 'I do just fine every day I don't have to spend with the poor little boy who was too scared to call for help while his buddies beat the shit out of me.'

If only Maxwell would look away. Will licked his parched lips again, and said, 'Doc told me I should force more tea on you. Maybe I should go make some.'

Maxwell almost smiled. It hovered on his mouth for a moment; and then, finally, his eyes dropped. 'Fine.'

Will didn’t know what to make of that. But Maxwell stepped back, and let him move, so Will slid by him. The small foyer put him into a den with a brick fireplace, a pot of dried flowers in the grate, and an old oak table with black wooden chairs. The kitchen was on the far end around a half-wall, a cramped little thing of hand-painted tiles and slim wood cabinets.

He heard the shower turn on when he set the kettle on the stove to boil. He rubbed his hands dry one more time, and stood staring down at them until they stopped shaking.

By the time Maxwell returned to the kitchen, his hair in a wet plait dripping down the back of his shirt, Will had the table set with steaming tea, a bowl of tomato soup, and a plate of toasted cheese sandwich. Maxwell surveyed it without comment.

Will finished rinsing the soup pot, and set it on the plastic drying rack beside Maxwell’s sink. 'You're not shivering now, at least,' he said. 'I... could pick up some groceries. If you want.'

'You are not my boyfriend, Stan.' Maxwell picked up half the sandwich, as if testing its reality. It made a dull plop when he dropped it back to the plate. 'Unless I'm misreading the signs, and all this making nice was about getting some hot revenge sex.'

Will cursed his complexion when he felt his face heat. Knowing he was red as a beacon, he stuttered weakly, 'I don't imagine you-- I mean, I'm, um, I'm gay, but you're not, I-- shouldn't have brought that up in any way. I know you don't, wouldn't, have any-- interest, at all-- um.'

Maxwell’s sudden laugh made Will jump. It was not a nice laugh. 'Holy fuck,' he said. 'It was about sex.' He put the tea cup on the counter, and stood in front of Will. He began to unbutton his shirt. 'You should have just said.'

Will was horrified. 'It's not,' he protested. 'What kind of a freak do you think I am?'

'A freak just like the ones who bent me over during the war.' Maxwell’s eyes were hard and unforgiving. 'Think that didn't happen? They must have a special training programme for Ozzies. How to fuck like you mean it.' His shirt hung open. He reached for Will’s, and pulled it hard out of his trousers.

Will jerked away, trapped against the sink. 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry that happened. It wasn't me. We didn't do that, Duo-- stop.' He fended Maxwell's hands away from his belt. 'Please!'

Maxwell shoved him back hard enough to bounce off the counter. 'Please,' he mimicked meanly. Then his face went still and serious. 'Please. Please. Please. Please.' Softer and softer, until the last was a whisper. 'I said that, too.'

Will didn’t dare to breathe.

Maxwell let him go. 'Get out,' was all he said, and Will did.


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Duo’s head fell back to Will’s shoulder. He smelled like warm hair, and salt, and sex._

AC 195

 

He knew almost instantly that something was different this time. After a week in this cell, he knew the subtle noises and the rock-solid routines that barred their little prison in this corner of the base. Change of guard was shuffling feet and yawns and papers crackling. Barton coming to collect Heero for another test of the Vayette Suit was a brisk march of boot heels on metal plating and crisply delivered orders. Anyone coming for himself or Wufei was a slow, considered walk, a low murmur, and the quick cocking of rifles. He’d heard that just a while earlier, and it had been Wufei, this time, whisked away with an escort to some featureless interrogation chamber to be numbed with question after question for a few hours.

The whispers outside the door were brief and apprehensive. Duo eased into a wary crouch with his back to the wall. When the door went slamming open, he sprang to his feet, instinct sending him back into shadow, but there were no corners to hide in. The beam of a hand torch followed him.

'Hold still!' a soldier hissed at him, and Duo did, his eyes catching the light reflecting off a pistol aimed for his head. This was not routine. Something was wrong, and it was going to be very bad for him.

The pistol cracked against his temple. Duo reeled with the blow, unable to stand with the knifing pain throbbing through his head, blinded by it. A salty palm slapped down over his mouth and prevented his outcry, and the arm that wrapped around his chest crushed all the air out of him.

He could see them all in the low overhead light of the hallway-- four of them, and no watchman at the console. They hustled him along the corridor, not the direction he was always taken for the interrogation sessions, but the opposite way. One of them had a key card and opened a storeroom door. They threw him to the floor of it, and he wheezed with the landing as he skidded back into a sharp-edged crate.

The one with the gun came after him. 'Colony trash,' he snarled. His leg drew back, and Duo rolled to his side as quickly as he could to catch the steel-toed kick in the soft part of his hip, not his vulnerable gut. 'Space-sucker!'

His leg went dead and paralysed. He wasn’t as fast with the second assault, and it landed in the same spot, a shooting, nauseating pain that stole his breath.

One of the other men squatted near his head. He wrangled Duo’s hands in the ungainly cuffs, twisting him around to expose his torso. Duo fought him, panting and frantic, until the one with the gun kicked him again under the ribs. 'Third Battalion, Second Regiment,' he was told. 'Twenty-three men in a single engagement, all of them killed by you. The 307 lost nineteen. All to you. The Second and Fifth lost thirty.' Another kick, this time square between his legs. The man covered his mouth while he yelled, and held him down while his body spasmed, trying to curl against the cramping, burning agony.

'This is for them,' that grim voice from above told him. The next boot caught him in the face, and before he blacked out, it occurred to him they were probably going to kill him.

 

**

 

AC 205

 

Duo swiped his meal card, and picked up his tray of Salisbury steak and boiled cauliflower. It was nearing nine in the evening, and he was tired, even on reduced duty. The new skin over his burned arm itched like wildfire, though the doctor claimed it was entirely in his head.

'I want to sit by a window,' he told Heero. He turned his head in time to see Heero twitching his cauliflower out of the gravy, like he was afraid it would taint his steak. Heero noticed his grin, and frowned at him.

'Grey matter,' he said.

'I’ll eat it,' Duo answered. 'What do you want to...'

Will Stanley was in the caf. He was sitting in the corner, alone at a table with a duffel of equipment at his feet.

He jumped when Heero’s tray bumped his. Heero scraped his vegetable onto Duo’s plate. 'Carter scored three hundred on the range today,' he informed Duo, and took Duo’s extra roll in exchange. 'That’s almost unheard of, for a rookie.'

Duo grabbed club sodas for them both, and followed Heero to their usual table. Stanley had seen him. Was staring at him, then trying not to.

'Didn’t you have a three hundred?' Duo said, later than he meant to. 'Of course, your arm was probably broken, and you were shooting with your big toe-- your left big toe--'

'Twice,' Heero retorted, deadpan. He used his fork to divide his steak into even bites. 'Or you could go confirm Stanley’s scores.'

Duo glanced back guiltily.

'I know who he is,' Heero said.

'Like hell you know.' He looked sharp. 'How would you know?'

'He was stationed on Lunar, while we were held there. I remember his face.'

'That memory trick is creepy and annoying.' He relaxed a bit, allowing himself the comfort that Heero didn't know everything, and wouldn't be interfering.

'You didn't answer me.'

'You didn't ask a question,' Duo said. 'It’s fine.' He faced Heero decisively, and planted his elbows on either side of his tray. 'It’s nothing.' He made mush out of his Salisbury, and broke up his remaining breadroll over it, but with the preliminary work done, he found it didn’t appeal anymore.

'Shit,' he muttered. He pushed his tray at Heero, and stood. 'Eat your veg. I’ll see you later.'

Stanley saw him coming, and had plenty of time to freeze up tighter than a virgin on prom night by the time Duo reached his table. Duo ignored his tentative greeting, and took the seat opposite him. Heero’s wasn’t the only head that turned in their direction, but Duo swept the caf with a burning glare that took care of that problem.

Stanley grasped desperately for conversation. 'Are you feeling better?' he asked.

'I'm fine,' Duo said.

'You had some nasty burns.'

'I said I'm fine.' He waved his arm randomly, thinking vaguely it would prove it worked. It hurt, actually. He pulled it close to his chest, annoyed with himself.

Stanley took it at face value, though. 'I’m glad,' he said.

Duo licked his lips. 'This food is pretty crap,' he said abruptly, and gestured at Stanley’s tray, bearing its own uneaten Salisbury steak. 'Want to go somewhere else?'

Stanley was all pink cheeks and wary eyes. That was a neat defence mechanism, blending in with all the twee newbs as if he hadn't been a soldier ten years at least. 'I don't think it's wise,' he said, in a stupid small voice that belonged to a kid watching a disaster, not a grown man deciding not to do anything about it.

'You said amends,' Duo challenged him. 'You made me a sandwich and gave me a lift and that's it? Guess I know where I stand.' He threw his legs over the bench. 'Whatever. You're right. See you, or not, I hope.'

'Maxwell. Duo.' Stanley stood. 'Okay? I mean-- okay. Let's go somewhere else.'

'Yeah.' Duo got to Stanley’s duffel first, and threw the strap over his shoulder. Stanley crumpled his napkin and scrambled over the bench to join him. 'Come on. I'll drive.'

'Shit,' Duo heard Heero say, very distinctly, as they left the cafeteria together.

The roads were emptying out. Duo took two shortcuts through town and over the bridge to the bay-side beaches, Stanley timidly silent the entire way. It was a humid, hot night, heralding more bad weather the like of which had created the storm from four nights ago, when everything had gone so badly.

Which was part of the problem. Duo didn’t need to be told that he’d behaved badly, the morning Stanley had driven him home. He hadn’t liked that part of himself coming so easily to the fore, the rage and bitterness he hadn’t even known he carried still about-- things. He’d gone a few days excusing his behaviour with the physical exhaustion, his emotional upset over losing so many of the mission team to the storm. He had enough honesty with himself to admit that he’d been too harsh. He just wasn’t sure how much he really wanted to apologise.

Ai Mei Thai was still open, sandwiched between a laundrette and a darkened nail salon. Duo parked in front of it, and Stanley followed without being told to, at least, when Duo went inside.

It was almost empty. An old man sat at the bar, and a booth of college-age kids congregated in the corner laughing at jokes Duo couldn’t hear. Duo caught the attention of the hostess, relaxing with her friends, and waved.

'I've never been here,' Stanley offered haltingly, brushing his fingers over a thicket of potted bamboo.

'I'm a regular.' Regular enough to choose his own booth, anyway. Duo picked a window seat again, one that gave him a view of the door and a view of the black night outside as well, just as a waitress in a slim red dress hurried over with a pot of hot tea. She left it on their table with a smile and a pair of menus.

Stanley waited until they were alone again to speak. 'I'm kind of surprised you invited me. I mean, for food. Real food. I guess I thought-- maybe it was code.'

'Yeah, well, don't get a warm and fuzzy yet.' Duo poured tea for them both. 'I want to talk, and I don't want to get in trouble if I get loud.'

Stanley exhaled hard. 'Okay.'

Duo sipped the tea, but it was too hot to drink yet. He saw a tremor in his hand as he set his cup down, and clenched both hands in his lap.

'You're the only one who... did stuff... that I've ever met again,' he said finally. 'I never really thought I would do. A million Ozzies, and you just happened to be there.'

A startled, uneasy smile crossed Stanley’s face. 'Lucky me.'

'Don't talk yet.'

Stanley flushed, and grabbed for his tea.

Duo made fists in his trousers, then put his hands back on the table, around the warm ceramic of his cup. 'You... represent... a lot of people who did awful things. And whether it haunts you or not, I don't know really, but sometimes it's like-- It’s like I can't breathe without someone telling me to let it go, to forgive all debts, to let bygones be bygones,' he said. 'Except that doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel right to me. How am I supposed to let go of people who died when they didn't have to? I made promises to myself. To them. To not forget them, to honour what they suffered. And somewhere along the way I decided I was worth honouring, too, and no, I don't want to just pretend that I never got hurt. I can't just sweep it all under the rug so that everyone else gets to feel better.'

His hands were shaking again. He felt almost dizzy. He shut it down, hard.

Stanley was chewing his lower lip. God, he looks young, Duo thought suddenly. Too young to represent anything but all the stupid kids out there who hadn't fucking known better, Duo included. 'Maybe you'd feel better,' Stanley offered tentatively.

'I can't.'

'Or is it that you don't want to feel better?'

'Why should I get to? The dead didn't get choices. Why should I? Why should anyone else?'

'Because we're not dead. We survived. It's our job to... to... live on for them.'

Duo tugged uncomfortably on the tuft of his braid. Neither of them spoke for a long time, then, Stanley displaying the first sign common sense since they’d met.

Duo rubbed his thumb over his fist, and finished his tea in three swallows. 'I don't know. I don't have answers.'

'Neither do I,' Stanley said.

'So here we are.'

'Yeah. No-one’s even bleeding.' His half-smile turned instantly into a look of horror. 'I’m sorry! I didn’t mean-- you know.'

'Don't be dumb.'

'I'm sorry.' Stanley rubbed his mouth, then sat back in the booth. 'Maybe I just feel like I have a lot on the line with you.'

'We're not friends. We're never going to be. So offend away.'

'Why can't we be?'

That surprised Duo, though why, he didn’t know. 'Because I'm not that good a person.'

'I don't think that's true.'

Duo shook his head. 'You can cuddle or fuck, but you can't do both.'

Stanley went red in the face, red all the way down the collar of his uniform. 'I think that's sad,' he mumbled, staring at his tea.

'It's reality.'

'Maybe it's just a part of reality you haven't got to, yet.'

Oh, and he hadn’t misinterpreted that, at least. Stanley might be playing the blushing innocent, but he was leaning in like he couldn’t help it.

It wasn’t the first time someone from the other side of the political border had expressed sexual interest in him. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d had sex with someone out of White Fang, or OZ, even Alliance. Stanley at least wanted to ask first.

Duo caught his waitress’s eyes, and dropped a bill to the table for the tea. He stood. 'Get in the car again,' he said.

'We haven't eaten,' Stanley protested.

'Get in the fucking car.'

'Duo, are you...' Stanley swallowed visibly. 'Yeah. Okay.'

Duo turned off the radio this time. He wasn’t sure entirely where he wanted to go, so he just drove, heading up the bay. They passed restaurants and clubs, a few of the old houses converted to law offices. The street lamps were paced farther apart, out here, and with the window rolled down a little he could smell the water.

He chose the parking lot of a deserted petrol station. It was empty, this time of night, unlit after hours. He parked by a fence, and turned off the engine.

Stanley broke his silence. 'Duo?'

Duo licked his teeth. 'Get in the back.'

'Look... I don't know what you're doing, but it's not all that nice--'

'Get in the fucking backseat, Stanley.'

Stanley was staring at him. For a second Duo thought he was going to argue, or cry, maybe, with his eyes wide and his lower lip caught between his teeth. Duo kept his eyes on the windscreen.

Stanley got out of the car. He opened the rear down and slid in, then closed it behind him. He sat still and waited.

Duo drew a deep breath. He opened his own door, and stood out onto the pavement. He stripped off his jacket, too hot for the summer air. He dropped it to the front seat, and shut the door. He felt overheated. He felt hot, and numb, weirdly numb, like he was wrapped in cotton batting. His footsteps dragged, walking back around the car to the boot. He unlocked it. There was a six pack of beer and a spare blanket. He picked up both, and then he opened the rear driver side and sat in the backseat next to Stanley.

'Have a drink,' he said, and handed Stanley a bottle.

Stanley hesitated a second. He touched Duo’s hand, and wrapped his fingers around the bottle neck. He saluted Duo with it, and drank. 'Kind of awful,' he said, in a little voice. 'Warm.'

'I bought it for the office party two months back.' Duo rubbed the edge of the blanket between his fingers. 'I can't... I never would have done what you did. Just stand by. I would never have done that.'

'I know,' Stanley agreed softly. He leaned down, and put the bottle in the cupholder. His hand fell back to the seat, a breath away from Duo’s thigh. 'I thought I was a different kind of person than that. Braver.'

'You should have been.'

'I know. Duo, I swear. I regret it.'

Duo exhaled. Then he leaned over Stanley, and kissed him.

 

**

 

When Duo had come into the backseat with that blanket, and his holstered gun still strapped to his hip like that, he’d thought-- he didn’t know, but his instincts had gone mad, telling him to run while he could. Then Duo leaned over him and his mouth pressed to Will’s, a hard clash of teeth and noses, his knee digging into Will’s leg.

Will heard a distant groaning-- his own. He caught Duo’s neck between his hands, his thumbs slipping over the sandpapery stubble on his jaw. Duo met Will’s tongue with his own, shifting over him in the seat and knocking over the rest of the beer bottles, and then he was pulling open Will’s shirt, stripping down the row of buttons and following his fingers with his lips, leaving tingling bites and wet skin behind. Duo sucked on his stomach, and then he unbuckled Will’s belt and unzipped his trousers.

They were going to have sex. He’d gone straight from thinking Duo might just shoot him in the backseat to Duo worming out of his clothes in Will’s lap so fast he wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t dreaming.

Duo’s gun went thunking to the floor with the holster. Duo struggled with a shirt cuff clinging to his wristwatch, and finally freed himself. He shoved his clothes over into the front seat, then leaned over the gearshift to slap open the glove compartment. He fumbled inside it out of Will’s line of sight, but when he came back, he was holding a strip of condoms, and a small bottle of lubricant.

Will took them in with a glance, and stared up at Duo. 'Duo, we don't have to,' he whispered. He traced circles on Duo’s hips, then smoothed the heel of his palm down those scars. They were vivid even in the dark, almost unhealed. The reddening erection that bumped up against his hand was a man's, but the smooth chest and the ropey muscle criss-crossed with those whip-lash lines of scar tissue were a fifteen year old boy who'd never grown out of shaking in another man's arms. For the first time, it was Duo who wouldn't, couldn't meet his eyes, Will trying in vain to catch him. 'Duo, we can talk.'

Duo didn’t answer. He kissed Will again, his teeth pulling on Will’s lower lip, and then he spread out the blanket over the upholstery. Will squirmed onto it and managed to lie back, though there wasn’t enough room to stretch out without hitting a door on either side. Duo pulled Will’s shorts down and off his feet, right over his shoes. He ripped open one of the condom wrappers with his teeth, and then he slipped the condom onto Will.

'No,' Will protested. 'It was supposed to be you.'

'Shut up, Stanley.'

'I don't usually...'

'Figure out how, then.' Duo squirted lube onto his hand and rubbed a great handful of it onto the condom. Will squirmed at the squeeze of Duo’s fist. He was-- he didn't know which of them was actually more frightened, but everything was going in fast-forward and there was no time to stop it. He was still reaching to catch Duo’s wrist when Duo was already finished. He crawled onto the seat over Will, tripping awkwardly on one of the bottles, and landed with a hand on Will’s shoulder.

'I haven't done it in a while,' Duo muttered at him. He grabbed Will’s hand and smeared him with the rest of the lube. 'Just-- a couple of fingers first, okay.'

If there had been a time to say ‘no’, it was gone. The lube was greasy and lukewarm. Will cupped Duo’s bottom, all hard muscle. He went as slowly as he could, hoping Duo would call a halt. Duo’s eyes closed and he went rigid when Will pushed his pointer finger in; it went in smoothly with the aid of the lube. Duo’s insides were dauntingly hot, almost pulsing. Will pushed in to the knuckle, and out. It was harder with two fingers, just getting in past the tight sphincter ring.

'Enough,' Duo said. He brushed Will’s hand away, then pulled Will upright. He shoved Will back against the seat, splayed out in the middle. Duo twisted around to put his back to Will.

'Not like that. Please.'

'Shut up.'

It was Will who closed his eyes then. Duo had a tight grip on him, holding him in place while he slowly sat back. He slipped at the last minute, unable to hold himself up without proper footholds in the little car, and gasped when he landed hard. Will bit through his lip. He’d had no idea it felt like this, enveloped-- Duo worming in his lap, every breath he took touching Will straight through the core like they were connected by one single nerve. He swam out of it slowly to find he had his arms wrapped around Duo’s heaving waist, his mouth open to Duo’s bare shoulder.

'Move,' Duo panted.

It wasn’t easy. He gathered his legs under him. Duo had a hand on the headrests on either side, his arms taut and shoulders bunched. Will lifted his hips up. The sound of their skin smacking shook them both. He did it again, and again, until it began to feel natural, the squeeze and release, the rasp of hair on their legs rubbing together, the sudden jolt whenever Duo’s long braid swung back against his chest.

'Duo?' he questioned. He was sweating all over, but Duo was cooling. He freed a hand from Duo’s hip and moved it to his groin. Duo was only half-hard, the head of his prick dry. 'I'm not doing it right. Am I?' He shifted his knees closer together, causing Duo to rock off-balance, and had to grab him to keep him from falling. Duo fell sharply back against him, 'Fuck' escaping him in shaky breath.

Whatever he’d done, it seemed to have been right. Duo had a deathgrip on the headrests. Will gathered his strength, and thrust his hips up hard. Duo made a little noise. Will wrapped a sweating hand around the base of Duo’s dick. The sheath of skin shifted as he pushed Duo up into his hand, and Duo made the noise again.

It was working. Duo came alive in his hand, and Will found a rhythm that served them both, going in as deep as he could, hard and fast on the upstroke, slow enough for Duo to feel it pulling out.

'I want... to look at you.'

'No,' Duo said. His hand curled over Will’s, then pushed it aside. He masturbated himself, faster than Will had done. When his back brushed Will’s chest, he left his sweat behind.

Couldn’t he do anything right for Duo? He made Duo stop by pulling him off-balance to the side, making him scrabble to stop himself from falling. Before Duo could yell at him, he had Duo back upright again, and grabbed Duo by the prick. He jerked him hard. Duo groaned. 'Let me do one damned thing for you,' Will whispered.

Duo’s head fell back to Will’s shoulder. He smelled like warm hair, and salt, and sex.

'One damned thing,' Will said again. The leak from Duo’s prick and the moisture on his own hand made it slippery. He couldn’t quite keep up both sides at once, but Duo began to tremble, soon, as Will jerked him off, and then his nails were digging into Will’s arm as he arched. Everything inside him went clamping down around Will like a vise, and Will cried out. Things went white, and he didn’t even realise he’d come until he was floating down from it.

Duo was sitting limply against him. Will swallowed dryly, and kissed his neck, just above the scar that curled his shoulder like a tattoo. He leaned his cheek against Duo’s.

Finally Duo moved. 'Let go,' he grunted, and shifted away slowly until Will slipped out of him. Will bit his lip, cradling himself with a palm until the tenderness eased. Duo fell into the seat next to him, and pulled his pants on. He drank the rest of Will’s open beer.

Will identified his shirt out of the pile of clothing on the floor, and dressed himself. Under the cover of the hem, he took off the condom, and tied it closed. 'Did I hurt you?' he asked, wishing he could see Duo’s face to gauge his mood. The burns on his arm looked inflamed.

Duo finished dressing, and climbed over the hump into the front seat. He turned the engine on, and put the AC on full blast, spraying very welcome cold air back. Will couldn’t find one of his socks, not in the dark, and left it. He didn’t think he could make the climb into the front seat as agilely as Duo, so he went out the door on legs that felt like jelly. Already his thigh muscles were sore.

When he took the passenger seat, Duo said, 'Where do you live?'

'On Roman and Sixth. It’s a grey brick building.'

'Okay.' Duo nodded, and pulled out of the lot. He was visibly tired now, his eyes low. He used his knee to direct the wheel, and didn’t shift as often as he had on the drive earlier. He was favouring the burns, Will thought, worried and ashamed.

'Will you stay the night?' Will asked.

'No.'

'On the couch, if you won’t take the bed.' They hit the highway. 'I won't ask you for anything more.'

Duo flicked a glance at him. He didn’t answer, but when they reached Will’s building, he parked and went in.


	4. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _'You could do what I do,' Will said._
> 
>  
> 
> _'What? Follow around a Gundam Pilot until he caves in?'_
> 
>  
> 
> _'Keep it somewhere safe and private.'_  
> 

'It’s fine,' Will said, as convincingly as he could. 'It’s not like we even work together.'

Kingsley raised her eyebrows. 'Yeah, right,' she retorted. 'Because Mr "I’m A Celebrity" throws a hissy every time you even walk into the room. I don't know who he thinks he is, pulling shit like that, anyway.'

'No-one's pulling anything. I don't get why everyone's making this such a thing.'

Suddenly Duo was at his shoulder, emerging out of the crowd lingering in the lobby for last-minute chats. 'Because,' he said, 'they're immature idiots who forget who routinely pulls their asses out of the fire.' He made a point of meeting every pair of eyes in the group. Michaels and Ohno, both of them just corporals, quickly made their excuses, and slipped toward the doors with the rest of the day shift. Kingsley, the only one besides Will who had been in OZ, glared right back at Duo, obstinately keeping her place.

Will faced him, too, trying to project a casualness he didn’t feel. 'Hi, Duo,' he said lightly. 'Can I help you?'

Duo barely glanced at him. 'Talk to you,' he said. 'If your mom here doesn't mind.'

'Sure.' Will took a step back from the doors. 'I’ll see you tomorrow, Kings.'

Duo was not amused. He watched Will’s section mates gather again, this time on the steps outside, all of them rather obviously turning to watch them talk. 'What kind of stories are you telling people about me?' he asked.

Will rubbed a hand through his hair as his neck heated. 'I haven't said anything. It's just... It was a big scene. You got suspended. And I got pulled from a desirable mission. People talk. I didn't have to say a thing.' He met Duo’s eyes, wistfully hoping Duo might believe him for once. 'And I wouldn't.'

Duo frowned. He chewed his lip, and then he said, 'Whatever. Look, I just came to give you back your watch. I found it in my car.' He took it from his pocket, and held it out.

Will flushed again. 'Thanks.' He hadn’t even noticed it was gone. He strapped it around his wrist, automatically reading the face for the time. 'It’s seven,' he said, perhaps irrelevantly, and took a leap. 'Maybe we could have dinner. Or something?'

Duo was thrown by the suggestion. Will saw it in the flicker of unease that crossed his eyes, the twinge at the corner of his mouth, before Duo controlled his expression. 'Why?' Duo said. 'I'm not even nice to you.' He pre-empted Will’s answer with the warning, 'I'm not going to start, either.'

'I like you.' It came out like the nervous confession it was. But it was a relief to say. It had been pressing, desperately, since he’d waked earlier that morning and found Duo gone from the couch.

They’d had sex. It should be assumed-- he should have been able to assume-- that if they’d had sex, they at least liked each other. At least a little. Will thought. So he offered Duo that little gift of risky honesty, and hoped it registered, at least in some microscopic way.

'Then you're stupid,' Duo said. He looked around, and then abruptly turned and walked away. 'People are staring,' he said over his shoulder. 'Why am I always the bad guy when I talk to you?'

'You're not.' Will supposed he was meant to follow, so he did. Duo walked with purpose, and he walked a few steps ahead of Will, which might have been plausible deniability and might have been a hint. 'Maybe people wouldn't see you as such a bastard if you'd chill a little,' Will added, as Duo chose a door. The faceplate claimed it as one of the old classrooms for Academy instruction, that had since moved to its own site. The room was empty. Will followed Duo in, and locked the door behind them.

'Maybe every time I see you, all I can think about is how you fucked me over, and I get a little urge to toss you down some stairs.' Duo faced him. 'Still want dinner?'

Will opened his mouth. Then the absurdity struck him, instead, and he found himself grinning. 'Yeah.'

That was the second time he’d unnerved Duo. Will took that as a win. 'It's not a date,' Duo said, scowling more than normal.

'Of course not. You're not my boyfriend.'

'No, I'm not.' Duo stepped closer to him. 'We've done amends, we've done more than amends, but you can bear that in mind.'

'I don't have an agenda, Duo.' He reached out, greatly daring, and slid his fingers over the smooth skin of Duo’s wrist. 'We'll even go dutch.'

He made Duo laugh, somehow. 'You're an idiot.'

'I’ve heard that recently. Let's go.'

'Now?'

'I'm done for the day,' Will pointed out. 'You’re done for the day. Everyone’s done. And it’s dinner time.'

Duo’s eyes went to the door, then settled back on Will. He said, 'We don't need dinner, to do what we're going to do after it anyway.'

'You have to eat.' Presumably Duo did eat, though Will had never actually seen him do it. When Duo hesitated, Will reminded him, 'It's not like it's a date or anything.'

'You're the one who wants to fuck.' His voice was sulky, resentful. He moved the hand that Will was gently holding, and tugged at Will’s crotch. 'Saves you a twenty on fancy pasta.'

'You know, I know I’m a sap, but I’m not completely pathetic.' Will freed himself and stepped back. 'Maybe they're right, and you really are a bastard.'

'Maybe that's what I want out of it,' Duo said after him. 'I don't count unless I want a deep and abiding friendship with you? Yeah, makes me a real jerk.'

'Are you coming?'

Will suspected no-one had ever turned down Duo’s offer before. Will tried to keep his sense of triumph from reaching his face, knowing Duo wouldn’t react well to seeing it; but he knew he’d tipped the scale, at last. Duo even looked a little lost.

But only for a few moments. Then Duo’s mouth firmed, and he went stalking past Will to the door. 'Your car. Fair’s fair. But I’m driving.'

Will bit down the smile that threatened. 'Sure,' he said.

 

**

 

'Too much garlic?' Will asked.

Duo shrugged. He, unlike Will, kept spare clothes in his car, and so he sat in a pleasant brown sport jacket and red shirt, whilst Will kept a formal seat in his work uniform.

Their server refilled their waters for the third time in as many hours, and Will finally took the hint for the bill. 'You mostly ate your thumbnail, not your food,' he told Duo.

'Same nutritional value.' Duo shot a hand out, but Will moved faster, and got to the receipt first. Duo sighed and tossed his napkin to the table. 'Is this part of the amends?'

'Maybe,' Will said, and counted cash out of his wallet. 'Am I missing the mark?'

'I don't think the mark is buying me stuff.'

'I thought maybe treating you decently was part of the package.'

'So what's next? Couples counselling? A three-day retreat in the desert where we learn trust-building?'

'I'd do it,' Will said.

'Jesus flipping Christ.' Duo glared at him. He’d been sullen all through their meal, and was definitely in a mood now. 'You know what, you make me so angry. You think you really can fix everything if you just, what, break past my evil little shell, get me to call it evens and move on with life. It's not that easy.'

'I didn't expect it to be,' Will replied honestly. 'I'm not going to run because it's a little bit hard.'

'Maybe I don't want you dogging my steps for the rest of time, begging me to shine my shoes and feed me and hug me. Maybe you ought to respect that.'

Will was moderately certain that wasn’t the dismissal it sounded like. If Duo needed to blow off some steam, Will could give him room to do it. He kept his tone absolutely reasonable as he agreed. 'Okay. I can.'

'How long have you been stationed here?'

'Here? Um, about a year.'

Duo's mouth twitched up in a bitter smile. 'You knew I was here, too. That I was in Preventers.'

'Yes,' he admitted. 'I saw you my first week.'

Duo rubbed his collar. He pulled his wallet from his pants, and dropped enough on the table to cover gratuity. 'Come on,' he said. 'I don't feel like hearing the dessert menu.' He didn’t wait for Will before he abandoned his chair and made for the door.

There was a rhythm to it, Will thought. There had to be. He just needed to ride it out until he could figure it out, identify it, learn to see it coming. He made sure the server saw the money he was leaving, and hurried out of the restaurant. Duo was already across the lot, waiting impatiently. Will jogged to meet him, hoping Duo wasn’t feeling pushy enough to start something in the car again. Duo let him get in and belt up, then turned on the radio, a heavy bass beat drowning out even the possibility of conversation. He pulled onto the street and slammed on the pedal, jumping to the speed limit in seconds.

Will let the music dominate until they reached the highway. Then he turned off the radio. He said, 'You shouldn't let Kingsley and them bother you so much.'

'She doesn't bother me, she bothers everyone. She's a fucking bitch.'

'Well, yeah. Maybe that's why you shouldn't.'

'I get along with plenty of people who were OZ and Alliance, you know.'

That was bullshit. 'I know,' Will said.

'I knew it was part of the job when I signed up.'

'We all did.' Will glanced at Duo from the corner of his eyes. 'No-one blames you, Duo.'

'It still feels like it's my fault.'

Three hours they’d sat in the restaurant, and now Duo wanted to talk. 'Well it's not,' Will repeated. 'And you should let it lie.' Duo took Exit 119A without being told to. They were going to Will’s then. Will didn’t comment on that. He did say, 'They’ll only push harder if they know they're getting to you.'

'Yeah. Not being a child, I've figured that out.' Duo turned the radio up again.

Still feels like my fault. Will turned that over, the exact phrasing of it, against what he'd thought he'd heard. An apology? He couldn't imagine it. Just a slip of the tongue. Will reached for the radio dial, and turned it down again. 'Preventers have more than just workplace politics. It's not easy for anyone. Everyone remembers what it was like to fight the person you're supposed to be working with today.'

'What am I supposed to do?' Duo demanded, looking away from the road to Will. 'Ignore it? Walk away? That doesn't work either. And it's not who I am.'

Duo turned left at the end of the exit ramp. It put them at the back entrance to Will’s community, the one without a gate guard. Duo went zipping down the little lanes between the apartments, apparently sure of his path.

'You could do what I do,' Will said.

'What? Follow around a Gundam Pilot until he caves in?'

'Keep it somewhere safe and private.'

Duo glanced at him again. Will carefully did not return the look. Instead he pointed to his building, though Duo didn’t seem to need the guidance. Duo took Will’s parking space, same as he had last night.

'Coming in?' Will asked.

 

**

 

Will turned on his kitchen light to illuminate his dark apartment. He loosened his tie and left it on the dining table with his keys. 'Duo? Want a beer?'

'Sure.' Duo lingered uneasily in his den. There wasn’t much in it; Will spent little enough time in his own home, and when he was there, he was usually sleeping. The television didn’t work and the bookshelf was largely empty. He’d had fish, for a while, but the tank was empty now, a few dusty plastic plants poking out of the gravel at the bottom. Duo trailed a finger along the edge of it, then stepped to the wall to read the plaque that hung there.

'Medal of Valour, Olivia Stanley, First Lieutenant,' Duo read aloud. 'Who was she? Sister?'

'My mom.' Will remembered his task, and opened his fridge. He took two bottles from the door, and hunted for the bottle opener he was sure he had in a drawer somewhere. 'They gave it to her posthumously. Well, to me. For her.'

'Oh.' Duo didn’t quite touch the plaque; then he put his hand in his pocket. 'Where was she stationed?'

'Colonies.' He found it, and popped the caps off both bottles. 'Guess I was never the soldier she was.'

'It made my job easier.'

He chuckled nervously and inappropriately. 'Yeah.'

'Look, I really don't want to talk.' Duo turned. He looked nervous, too, in the yellow glow of Will’s kitchen light, nervous and lined and tired. And angry. Will could almost imagine the anger like a cloak that Duo always wore, a cloak that didn’t quite fit but still kept him warm when nothing else did.

'I'll blow you, if you like,' Duo said.

Will slammed the drawer shut after the bottle opener. 'So you can hate me some more?' he countered. 'Because I made you suck my dick like some kind of-- skanky whore?' L2 whore. It had leapt to his lips, the first time in a decade he’d ever even been tempted to say something like that. He knew all the epithets-- his mother had served in D Area, and she’d been killed in action there-- but any racism he’d had had been beaten out of him in Storeroom 14 on Moon Base. The slip was near enough to make him feel ill.

'Why don't you let me blow you?' he said, and left the kitchen.

'Because that's not the offer I made.'

'No. But thank you.' He handed Duo his beer. 'Here.'

Duo shook his head, then drank. 'You're an idiot. Who passes up sex without strings?'

'You're not offering me sex.' He watched the way the light caught ginger glints in the longer hairs around Duo’s face. He didn’t know if the braid was a style in the colonies, or if it was just something Duo did for personal reasons, but it was such an unusual length on a man. Only Colonel Merquise had hair as long, but somehow that was different. He wondered if Duo ever wore his loose. 'You're using-- that-- to justify hating me still.'

'You think I need to justify anything to myself?' Duo met his eyes almost rudely. He tilted the bottle back again and drank deeply. 'I'm not in your position, Stanley.'

'Aren't you?' Will asked him soberly.

Another swallow, and Duo finished his beer. He put the bottle on the table with the fish tank, and came to Will. 'No,' he said. He took hold of Will’s shirt, and pulled him across the last step between them, and kissed him hard.

It was their first kiss standing, and it made an amazing amount of difference. He felt the press of Duo’s entire body, this way. He took Duo’s hips between his hands, while Duo’s went rubbing down his shoulders and back, fingers digging into his muscles, then down to his ass. He squeezed and pulled Will closer, close enough to rub their groins together. Will was embarrassed at the sound that escaped him, but if Duo noticed, he didn’t evince it.

They were only a handful of stumbles from the couch. Duo manoeuvered him back to it, his tongue an insistent presence in Will’s mouth the entire way, right until his calves met the cushion and Duo knocked him backward onto it. Duo shed his jacket and shirt, imperiously pushed Will flat, and climbed on top of him.

Will didn’t know when they’d entered a race for the finish, but Duo seemed to feel there was a deadline. He let Duo undress him between bruising kisses, trying to sneak in the caresses he was sure he wouldn’t be allowed once they were done. Duo’s bare skin was smooth, his chest almost hairless but for a line between his pectorals. Will let muscle and bone direct his hands, only avoiding the raw patch of shiny red skin on the right arm where Duo had been burned. He tentatively traced the scars Duo had shown him the morning of the storm. The one on his back was thick and sunken, the flesh still ridged after all the time that had passed. The pads of his fingers found others, their stories unknown to him, as he passed a caress down the length of Duo’s spine, then up to his neck, beneath the base of the braid.

Duo put a hand inside his boxers and curled around him. His lips found Will’s nipple, and he sucked softly for a moment, before his teeth closed over it. Will hissed and gripped the back of Duo’s head. 'Duo,' he whispered.

Duo bit just a little harder, then sat up enough to strip Will of his boxers. He pumped Will at the base a few times, examining him with sharp eyes. He slipped a knee off the couch, and went down on him.

'No,' Will protested, pushing Duo’s head away. 'I already said I didn’t want you to do that.'

'Fucking shut up!'

He winced. 'Then let me... do it too.' This wasn’t what he wanted, again. He didn’t want sex that felt like a weapon.

Duo let him go. He planted himself on the floor with his back to the couch. Will slid off, too, and knelt in front of him. 'Let me do it to you first,' he cajoled. He laid his hand on Duo’s thigh. 'I want to be kind to you. Treat you like you deserve.'

'What makes you think I deserve any kindness now, any more than I did when I was fifteen?'

'You deserved it then.'

Duo was expressionless, except for his eyes. Storming eyes. He said again, quieter, 'Shut up, Stanley.'

Will leant in. He kissed Duo, this time, not as roughly, but with heat, all the same. The only place they were touching was their lips, and the hand Will rested on Duo’s thigh. He was warm, there.

Duo cupped the back of his head. Will deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue through Duo’s lips as they parted for him, painting long sweeps over the roof of Duo’s mouth. Duo slowly fell back to the carpet, and Will stretched over him, this time, helping Duo with the fastenings of his jeans. Together they worked them down his hips until there was room enough for Will to fondle him. When he was sure Duo was hard, he gripped a fist and stroked instead, long strokes that made Duo gasp into Will’s mouth. Duo squirmed, trapped under Will’s legs, then grabbed him by the wrist and pulled his unoccupied arm over his head and held it there with both of his own.

Will gazed down at Duo’s face, wondering what he was thinking. He watched for clues as he beat Duo off—too fast? Not hard enough? Duo’s fingers clenched around his wrist when he began to tease the foreskin back. He wrapped his leg over Will’s and held it there tensely.

'Do it to me this time, okay?' Will whispered. He licked the underside of Duo’s jaw to catch a shimmer of perspiration. 'I want you.'

'No.'

'Why?'

'I've tried it. I don't like doing it that way.' Will wondered if he was lying. He couldn’t read Duo, suddenly, and his confidence faltered. Duo made a noise of impatience, and said, 'If this is all you can do, would you just do it?'

'Sorry.' Will flicked his wrist, and Duo grunted, arching up into him. 'Tell me what you want and we'll do it.'

'I already told you.' Duo shook his head, and closed his eyes. 'Hold my hands down.'

I hate this, Will thought, clearly and a sense of weird foreordination. But if Duo wanted to be degraded, there was only so long Will could stop him from demanding it. He obeyed. Duo’s legs went tight around him. Will pressed his hands down into the carpet and ground down on him.

Everything was hot and damp where their groins mashed together when Will slowed. Duo was open-mouthed and sweating, his fringe clinging to his forehead. 'I have condoms in my wallet,' Will told him breathlessly.

'Go get them.'

He reached for his trousers and clawed his wallet out while Duo watched him. Will got one out and on quickly. It was pre-lubricated, but he spat in his palm anyway, several times, enough to make a second coat of slickness.

'Would you just do it?' Duo said. He turned his face away when Will tried to kiss him.

There was no way to make it less ugly when ugly was what Duo wanted from him. It just felt so unhappy.

He shucked Duo’s jeans the rest of the way, and Duo spread his legs wide. He tried to move quickly and slowly at once, moving his wet fingers between Duo’s cheeks and inside of him. He kissed the soft inside of Duo’s thigh, and kissed him again where his fingers disappeared inside him, making Duo twitch. He made sure the condom was secure, and pulled Duo’s legs around his hips. Duo was lying still now, his eyes closed so that he looked almost serene. His hands lay palm-up beside his head, his fingers curled loosely. It was a vulnerable position, and Will tried not to fool himself with it.

'Breathe, Duo,' he whispered, and pressed slowly inside.

Sudden hideously loud buzzing from the floor.

Duo jumped a mile in his arms and Will almost reached for a weapon he didn’t have with him. They both lay frozen, trying to identify the noise.

'My mobile,' Duo said.

'Do you have to get it?' His mind re-engaged, and he scooped up Duo’s jeans, fumbling at the pockets until he found the vibrating slip of plastic. Duo was clumsy opening it, cramming it to his ear and twisting his face away from Will.

'What?' he snapped. There was a short pause. 'Fuck, Heero, I don't know. I'm doing something.'

Will could just hear another male voice, and what might have been his own name. Duo’s eyes flicked to him for just a second.

Will wet his throat. He gathered his arms under him, and carefully pulled out of Duo, making sure the condom came with him. His pants were crumpled half over his ankles already and he sat to put them on.

Duo caught his arm. He covered the mouthpiece on his phone, and said, 'Why did you stop?'

'So you could take your call,' Will whispered, surprised by the implication.

Duo glared. To his phone, he said, 'Yeah. I know what you mean. What'd she say to that?' and then covered the mouthpiece again and hit Will with a kiss that nicked his lip and made him shudder. Duo lay back, and waited for him.

It was an opportunity, whether Duo had meant it to be or not. Will brushed a kiss over the knuckles of Duo’s hand and lay over him. He rested his head on Duo’s flat stomach, gripped his cock, and swallowed it.

'Shit,' Duo mumbled. But didn’t push him off.

This was better. He sucked at the crown in pulses, laving it chaotically with his tongue. He swept over Duo’s loose balls with his thumb, then tickled lightly with his fingertips, and lowered his head until he could feel the head in the back of his throat and his mouth was full with Duo. Some part of him not so singly concentrated felt Duo’s hand come to rest tentatively in his hair, the first—almost—tender gesture. He pressed his tongue up Duo’s length and let Duo down his throat, swallowing around it until he thought he would gag. Duo’s stomach heaved under his cheek.

Duo spoiled the moment by grumbling into the phone, 'I have never in my life given a flying shit for what Relena Peacecraft has to say.' And then almost without a beat, 'Fingers. Fuck me with your fingers.'

He let Duo fall from his mouth just long enough to wet two. Duo was loose enough to take them easily, while Will used his other hand to bring Duo back into his mouth. An accidental brush of his teeth made Duo suck in a shaky breath, so he repeated it, and closed his lowers too with a firm curve of his fingers in Duo’s hole. He risked a glance up-- Duo still had the mobile cradled to his ear, his thumb going white with pressure where he covered the mouthpiece. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut.

He found a fleshly little lump inside Duo and rubbed it. Duo jerked, entirely involuntarily, and reached down to Will’s hand to press it in harder. Will did, and added a third, almost the same width as his dick would have been. Duo arched.

'Shit!' he said. 'Heero, I don't fucking care!'

Poor Heero Yuy, Will thought. He wondered if the man had any idea. Probably not. Probably he was wondering if someone was abusing his friend.

Duo strained against him. His sudden shouting startled Will. 'Because you kill people for a living and she's never going to get that and if you can't say it to her, it's still not my problem and I'm tired of talking about it!' he yelled. 'This is what we do! And fuck her, fuck her for dragging this fucking conversation on for ten fucking years past the expiration date, and fuck you, Heero, I'm trying to come, so fuck-- fuck.' He threw his mobile across the room, and crammed Will’s hand against himself.

Will was almost laughing around the fullness in his mouth. That was gorgeous, he thought with delight, not least because it was proof of the one thing that had been eating at him. Duo was the same with everyone. He applied himself with renewed energy, pulling Duo deep into his throat and pumping his hand. Duo groaned something garbled, his fingers locked painfully around Will’s wrist, and then Will tasted something bitter in spurts.

They rested together in the dark on Will’s carpet. Will made a map of Duo’s sharp hipbone, and Duo’s fingers rested, probably by accident, just touching his lips. He didn’t want to move, but finally he made himself, using his tongue to soothe while he slipped his fingers away from Duo’s body.

He felt Duo swallow, they were that-- harmonised. Will kissed Duo’s soft cock where it lay back on his belly, and, one by one, the three scars that led like jagged lightning away from it.

Duo tugged on his hair, then. Will followed the gesture, rising enough to come lie beside Duo.

'No. Come on,' Duo said in a guttural whisper. 'You didn't finish.' He tried to guide Will between his legs.

Will resisted. 'I don't have to. I got what I wanted.'

Duo’s hand fit to his groin, as if to test him for a lie. He was still hard, a bit, but wasn’t lying, either. He gently disengaged Duo’s grip.

'I was pretty rough,' he explained. 'It's going to hurt if we do it now. I don't like hurting you, Duo.'

Duo flopped back to the carpet with a disgusted eye-roll. 'Of all the hurting of me that you've been a part of, that was not the worst.'

And if Duo was the same with everyone, then maybe it was time Will stopped forgetting to expect it. Will rubbed his throat, and grabbed his trousers again. 'I've got to go,' he said, fumbling a foot into them.

'It’s your flat.'

He didn’t answer. He got himself dressed enough to walk, and left Duo there on the floor. His little bath was closest, and he went in there, thinking only that he might close the door, have a moment to breathe in privacy. He turned on the sink and let it run, but then he was sitting on the edge of the tub, staring blindly.

There was movement in the den. Will stood, and watched through the crack as Duo dressed, then hunted for his mobile phone. When he picked it up, he put it to his ear, and then his eyes dipped wearily closed.

'Why don't you ever hang the fuck up?' he asked it softly. 'You need to come get me. No, I don't have my car.'

Will licked his lips, and opened the door so Duo could see him. 'I'll take you home.'

Duo looked at him for a long time in silence. Then he said, 'Nevermind,' to Yuy, and closed the phone.

Will left the bath, and leaned against the wall instead. 'I'm sorry.'

'Why?' Duo put the mobile back in his pocket. 'You've been clear from the beginning. You want to fuck without fucking me.'

'I don't know what that means.' He rubbed his jaw again, realising he was sore. 'I like you. It bothers me to treat you like I don't. It bothers me that you want me to.'

'You must be over not wanting to piss me off.' Duo might have said more, but the frenetic buzz of his phone started again. Duo looked annoyed as he retrieved it. 'Heero, I said-- sir.'

Will blinked.

Duo listened, his spine gone straight as if he were actually facing a superior officer. He said, 'Yes, sir. Thank you.'

'Who was it?' Will asked.

Duo fidgeted with the antenna on the phone, and looked up at Will. 'You must have left your pager at the base. Merquise is looking for you.'

'He thought you'd know where to find me?' Will guessed, shocked.

'Apparently.'

His face felt hot. He covered it by ducking back into the bath, to shut off the sink. 'Sorry,' he said through the door. 'I didn't tell him anything.' He flipped on the light and brushed his hair quickly. There was nothing to do about the reddness of his lips but hope it faded before he got back to base. Duo was holding his shirt for him when he emerged, and he slipped it on quickly. 'I'll drive you home,' he said. 'Merquise can wait half an hour.'

'There's such a thing as cabs,' Duo said. 'Or Heero. Go back to base.'

'Do you have to argue every stupid thing?'

'Yes,' Duo snapped. 'Because every stupid thing that you think I'm putting crap up about is important, to me, so you can fuck off.'

He found his tie on the table and threw it around his neck. 'Look, just stay here. We can talk when I get back. Okay?'

'Like hell.'

'Please?'

Duo stared at him for a long time. Then he sighed, and sat on the couch. He dropped his head to the cushions and gazed up at the ceiling soundlessly.

'Thank you,' Will told him. 'I’ll be fast. I promise.'

When he had the time to call, four hours later, Duo didn’t answer.


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _'Oh, god,' Duo said, disgusted. 'Don't get sappy on me. I plan on ignoring you the entire damn time. I might even leave you behind.'_

Stanley completed a lap across the Preventers training pool, dove for the wall, and flipped under water. A push of his legs shot him several feet back out, and he surfaced with a gasp and a splash of his arms.

Duo watched him from the bleachers through another few laps, waiting for his presence in the otherwise empty pool to be noticed. When it didn’t happen, he unhooked his pager from his belt and typed out _luk up dumass_. He sent the message. A moment later, Stanley’s pager, sitting prominently on top of his towel at the side of the water, started beeping loudly.

Stanley immediately made for the edge. He slicked water from his hair and popped his goggles off, read his pager. Duo stood up, letting Stanley find him as he scanned the room.

Stanley pushed himself out of the pool and wrapped himself in the towel. He climbed up to meet Duo, and sat next to him on the bench. 'What’s up?' he asked, wiping off his face. 'Problem?'

Duo propped a foot on the bench below him. 'We're on a team together,' he said. He stowed his pager away and dropped his elbows to his knees. 'Which of us is going to tell Merquise it's a bad idea this time?'

That took longer to parse than the pager message, somehow. Stanley wiped his forehead again. 'We're on a mission? How?'

'Ask how it didn't ever happen in a year being stationed at the same base,' Duo retorted sarcastically. Stanley was staring at him. Duo scratched back a wisp loose from his braid, and took out his pager to occupy his fingers against the twitching they wanted to do. 'Apparently, they need a pilot and a linguistics expert at the same time. We’re relieving a unit in Turkmenistan.'

Stanley pulled his towel around his shoulders and finally stilled. 'Are you going to refuse again?'

'I don't know.'

'We’re in a relationship,' Stanley began.

'We’re not in a relationship,' Duo corrected him.

'Yes, we are,' Stanley said stubbornly. 'You’re fucking me. You respond to me. You seek me out.' He softened his tone when Duo turned to glare at him. 'We talk. It’s a relationship.'

'We don’t,' Duo said. 'Talk.' 

The silence that developed between them was humid as the summer air, a sodden and uncomfortable thing that didn’t want to be shaken.

Then Duo shrugged. 'Well, so we make it work.'

Stanley had the nerve to smile. 'Really?'

'Oh, god,' Duo said, disgusted. 'Don't get sappy on me. I plan on ignoring you the entire damn time. I might even leave you behind.'

'Sorry. I didn’t mean-- sorry. Maybe I'm out of line.'

Duo rolled his eyes. He didn’t look back while he walked away.

 

**

 

'Duo.'

'Go away,' Duo mumbled, and turned his head out of the sun.

'Duo, come on.' Will shook Duo by the shoulder, trying not to dislodge him, or the sniper rifle he was holding, from the precarious perch he’d made for himself on top of several duffels and crates of equipment in the tiny sliver of shade provided by their plane. Duo groaned at him but did finally sit up, shoving up the shade visor of his helmet to squint blearily at him.

'What can you possibly want?' Duo demanded.

Will put his back to the Osprey’s baking metal plates. Despite the burning heat where his back touched titanium, the shade did alleviate the unrelenting glare of the sun.

'Weren’t you gone somewhere?' Duo said a moment later.

'I had tea with the headman’s second son.' Will made sure the nearest duffel was solid, and sat on the edge of it. 'Everyone's jumpy.'

'So?' Duo said.

'So, there's going to be trouble.'

Duo rubbed at his eyes, and settled his rifle higher on his thighs. 'So?'

Will tried not to be irritated. 'I've been in combat before, too. You can trust my instincts.'

Duo grumbled out a little sigh, and unstrapped his helmet. He dropped it to the sand and scratched his hair thoroughly with both hands. He was sweating from the heat, as Will was. Though they’d only been in Ahal Province for nine days, his face was already thinner. He was suffering the conditions, more than any of the team. 'It's not about trust,' he said. 'I can't do anything until something happens, and until something happens, I'm not going to know what something is.'

'The headman’s son,' Will repeated. 'He said something that made me nervous. Some of the nomadic tribesmen have been watching us since we got here. They don’t like soldiers. A lot. He thinks they've got friends. And they're coming. Tonight. Or maybe near dawn.' Duo rubbed balm over his chapped lips, and tossed the little container into Will’s lap. Will waited for some sign of acknowledgment, some gratifying indication that Duo was at least listening to him, but got none. 'Are we ready to fly?'

Duo used his sleeve to mop his face. In a low mumble Will had to strain to hear, he said, 'Commander's been asking too. There's a problem with the main engine. I landed on auxiliary. It's not common knowledge, so don't spread it around, but it'll make any sudden movement problematic.'

Shit. He didn’t know how Duo could be relaxed enough to sleep, sitting on news like that. It made the back of his neck itch, and no-one was even looking at them.

'Would anyone in town know?' he pressed. 'Could word get back to those tribesman, somehow.'

'Are you always this jittery?'

'I'm always this careful.'

'Stanley!' It was Commander Markov. He came toward them across their camp of tents. He was walking with one of their native guides, a young Turkman in plastic sandals and a plaid dress shirt who looked nervously around him. 'Good you’re here,' Markov said to him, as Will and Duo stood quickly. 'We could use an interpreter.'

Suddenly Duo looked eager. 'He said he could find us a replacement cylinder,' he explained softly to Will.

'I find,' their guide said anxiously. 'I find.'

Markov put a hand on Will’s shoulder and squeezed tightly. 'Ask him where,' he said.

'Salam aleykum,' Will greeted the man briefly. 'You did find them a replacement?'

'I have a cousin at the base in Ashgabat,' the young man answered. 'It’s not for the same model plane, but your pilot said it didn’t matter.'

It made Will wonder how they’d conveyed such specifics to the man, without him to do the translating. 'Not the same model,' he told Duo. 'Will it work?'

'It could. It should.'

'Where is it?' he asked the guide.

'In the town. Five, six kilometres from your camp.'

'I can go now, Commander,' Duo said immediately.

Markov was nodding in agreement. 'Get your ass back here as soon as you can. Who do you want with you?'

'Stanley,' Duo said.

That surprised Will, but Markov accepted it without comment. 'Make it fast,' he told them both. 'If your suspicions are right and something’s going down tonight, I want to be mobile. Get moving.'

Suspicions? Duo got an accusing look from Will for blowing off his concerns only minutes ago. Will schooled his face to professional blankness, with the Turkman watching. But it hadn't been necessary to pretend not to take him seriously, even if it were for operational silence.

Duo hooked a hand under Will’s arm and pointed him toward the back end of the plane, and the outskirts of the village they’d camped near. 'We're just going to walk away, like you're talking to him more about the area.'

Will obeyed the suggestion, and engaged their guide in a conversation about a local holiday the headman’s son had mentioned, a celebration of the ancestral dead. Duo walked casually along with them while Will translated, not listening to a word. Markov didn’t follow, and they struck out into the desert and out of their secure perimetre.

The guide’s jeep was parked just out of eyesight of the camp. 'I can drive you,' he told Will, displaying his keys. 'You won’t be able to carry the cylinder.'

'They might need our vehicles here,' Will hazarded, catching Duo's gaze on their small collection of Preventers' armoured humvees. 'Then again, we might need it more.'

'Your call,' Duo said.

They'd have to follow the Turkman in his car, anyway. And he might be an ally they'd want, and want to protect, if anything happened in town. They could protect him, and their cylinder, better if they were all together, and if bullets started flying the car wasn't going to make that much difference. Will shrugged, and nodded toward the Turkman's jeep.

'Fine,' Duo agreed. Will took the front passenger seat with their guide, leaving Duo the rear-facing bench in the back. Duo clambered in after them, and their guide started the engine. It puttered weakly, but responded to the petrol, and sand sprayed as the guide wheeled about and stumbled back onto the lip of the unpaved road. Will lowered his visor against the glare of the sun, now starting to descend in the late afternoon.

They bounced over a rut, and Will felt a hand on his arm again. He turned to look at Duo.

'Are we going to get back before the team gets hit?' Duo asked him.

If it weren't such a critical thing, he'd wonder at that 'we'. He was along for show, for a few words in a language Duo obviously hadn't needed to get the cylinder. Duo wasn't even looking at him, squinting out at the desert as they drove.

'No,' he said. It was a guess, but he thought he was right.

The guide glanced at them from the corner of his eyes. When Will caught the look, he hurriedly turned his head back to the road.

'We need the plane,' Duo said in his ear. 'We need the cylinder. No-one gets out unless we get back.'

'I don't think the target is in the camp.' It dawned fast and frightening, that realisation. The guide was too nervous, had been since Markov had brought him in. Preventers special ops ran small teams. They didn’t have another pilot if Duo were incapacitated. As much as they needed the plane, it wasn’t going to do them a damn bit of good without someone to fly it. And if Will could think that, so could their enemies.

And Will had done them more than the favour of walking out of camp with the pilot. He'd put them in a vehicle being operated by a local, unprotected, and-- and Duo had let him, and so had Markov. They'd be back there fortifying, and Duo had all but volunteered Will for a suicide run.

Duo’s eyes evidenced a dangerous fatalism. 'Okay,' was all he said, and he sat back in his seat.

They’d entered the outskirts of the little village. Scattered farms became orderly rows of houses, almost all abandoned. Frequent action between Afghani insurgents and the unit Will’s team had replaced had emptied the area of anyone who could afford to get gone. People like their guide who relied on a local business hadn’t been so lucky. Maybe they were unlucky now. The outgoing team had warned them when they landed that there was suspect travel over the border, right on the road they drove down now.

They went further than five kilometres, by Will’s estimation, skirting the market and taking them down narrow alleys. Sand-coloured buildings leaned over them, and every broken dark window looked like a malignant eye, to Will’s suddenly active imagination. The jeep caught every imperfection in the street, jarring them to the bone.

They stopped abruptly. The house looked suspiciously empty. Ragged lace curtains blew from a front window over a tumbled garden wall. The front gate had been knocked askew and hung open.

'Part inside,' their guide said in accented English. 'We go inside.'

He looked scared. Or conflicted, maybe. He turned off the jeep.

Duo climbed down the bumper. He offered a shoulder to Will as he stepped out too, and fixed the strap of his rifle so the muzzle pointed down and ready. 'Don’t take this the wrong way,' Duo murmured to him. 'But if it’s you or me, you're the expendable one here.' Then an almost excited grin broke out of his face. 'Try not to get shot.'

A witty retort hovered on his lips. Will didn’t say it. Instead he nodded, and followed their guide inside.

'Shu tayda,' the guide called out. It was dim inside, dirty and wrecked. Will gripped his own rifle tightly when he crunched down on a broken ceramic lamp. He heard Duo shuffling behind him. 'Ahey!'

He jumped when a door banged unseen. A ratty looking man in a muddy dishdasha emerged from a backroom. He observed their guns, and spoke rapidly in a local dialect peppered with corrupt Russian to their guide.

Duo drew even to Will’s shoulder and raised an eyebrow. 'He's the one,' Will interpreted, trying to piece the conversation together and think at the same time. 'I think they're going to try to take you.'

'Is the cylinder real?' Duo asked sharply.

Will interrupted the two natives. 'Is our equipment ready?'

It was the guide who answered. He nodded several times and gestured repeatedly. 'Here in the back room,' he said. He was starting to sweat. It gleamed in rivulets down his face in the shifting light from the curtains.

'Wait here,' Will told Duo, taking an imperious tone to make it obvious to the men watching that it was an order. Duo immediately took his hint and dropped back, ducking his head. If he really was the target, Will didn’t want him going off into a dark room first. 'Show me,' he told the guide, and walked ahead as confidently as he could.

The ratty man lead the way. They crossed a cramped little hallway of cracked walls and one conspicuous bloodstain at head-height. He opened a door at the end of it and went through. Will wrapped his pointer finger through the trigger of his rifle.

'Here,' the guide said.

Will entered cautiously. There really was a cylinder. It was sitting on a table, right in plain view. And stretched out underneath it were three bodies, very obviously dead. The headman’s son was amongst them.

The ratty man pulled a gun from under his robe. 'This is our country!' he shouted, and aimed at Will.

A shot rang out, but it came from behind, while Will was still raising his rifle. The ratty man stumbled and fell, blood erupting from his neck. Duo.

'Who was he?' Will demanded from the guide. 'Who—'

He didn’t make it any further. The guide knew he was found out, and he panicked. Babbling madly so fast that Will couldn’t make out individual words, he dove for his dead companion, and grabbed his sidearm.

'Put it down!' Will shouted. He levelled his rifle, but the guide was beyond hearing reason.

'I didn’t mean it!' he pleaded, even as he grabbed Will’s jacket and forced him back to the wall. Will tried to knock him back without shooting, but the man was wild. 'He threatened my family, there are more waiting for you--' He pressed the gun to Will’s chin under his helmet.

Then Duo was there, on them in seconds. He ripped them apart and disarmed the guide, then held the gun on his head. A crash sounded behind them in the house. Shouting. People were coming running, with a chaotic clash of metallic equipment that had to be guns.

Duo spoke to the guide in a low, reasonable voice, refusing to be hurried. 'We understand,' he said several times, until the guide finally nodded. 'I want you to tell me how many people are coming. I want you to tell us where they're coming from. And then I want you to help us get out of here, and we'll protect you.' He looked to Will for translation.

Will hurriedly repeated it. The ratty man was very dead, he thought, and the gun he’d been using was Preventers issue, which didn’t speak well for the unit they’d relieved. He barred the door they’d come from while the guide began another frantic spew of muddled words. 'Mukaddes,' he repeated again and again, 'Ozbashdaklyk--'

'Clerics,' Will interpreted. 'The Independence Party.'

Duo’s eyes were on Will, not the man he held at gunpoint. He was waiting for a sign.

'It’s the truth,' Will said.

Duo nodded, and stuffed the gun away in his camis. 'Help me with the cylinder.' He grabbed the guide by the shoulder. 'We’ll protect you and your family if you help us,' he said. 'Come on.'

A shot hit the door and splintered the wood, missing them by sheer chance. Duo fired back, right through the wood, his sniper rifle earning muffled yells from the other side. Will ran back for the cylinder, and the guide finally came to his senses enough to help. They wrestled it off the table and over to the window. Will broke it with his elbow, raining glass on the street below, and together they heaved it out. 'Come on!' he called Duo.

Duo fired twice more, and all voices stopped. 'How many more?' he demanded of the guide, running to their window. He helped boost Will out of it.

'He says he’s not sure,' Will translated. He caught the guide as he came out next, and then Duo was jumping down. There were more cars on the street now, where it had been empty before, but it was quiet. He didn’t propose going back in to be sure. Duo grabbed one side of the cylinder and Will the other, and they went running for the jeep with the guide on their heels. The keys were still in the ignition. They got the cylinder in the back of the jeep, and Duo pulled the guide in with him. Will ran to the front.

'Will you fucking drive already?' Duo demanded as Will settled into the drivers’ seat.

They were pattered with shots high and from the right. A second group. Duo returned fire, and Will slammed the jeep into motion. They hurtled forward, and he peeled around a corner into an alley between two houses. When they emerged from the other side, all they could hear was distant shouting, and then they were out of range even for that.

'Does he know how many?' Duo asked Will then, and Will shouted it over his shoulder in Turkmen.

'He says they’ve been coming into the village for days,' he reported, translating as fast as the guide could tell him. 'There’s a cleric leading them. He’s an Afghani. They took some of the women and held them until everyone agreed to help. They were behind the attack on the old unit. He thinks there’s as many as twenty of them. They told him--'

A shot shattered the windscreen. Will ducked instinctively. Duo was on his feet again, the rifle hovering over Will’s head as he wrestled with the wheel. He heard a scream, and Duo leaned over him.

'Told him to hold onto the cylinder until they were ready for us.'

'What about the camp?' Duo latched a hand to the metal support that had once held the screen, swaying with the jeep as Will turned another corner. They were heading toward the market. Will tried to keep to the edges, unwilling to endanger innocent bystanders, and knowing that if they got stuck in a crowd, they’d be sitting ducks for slaughter.

'The camp?' he demanded from the guide. 'Tonight. With the darkness. They have weapons, our weapons, Preventers issue. And he thinks they’ve got a missile of some sort.'

His little side street opened out into a wide main road, and an ambush. The retort of Duo’s gun was thunderous right above his head. Will felt the right-side tyres leave the road as he swerved on instinct, shooting right through someone’s garden yard and crashing through a wooden shed. Duo almost fell on top of him, and the guide was yelling at him to take the street coming up, and bullets were everywhere, spraying bits of brick and plaster as they careened away.

Duo dropped his rifle to the seat next to Will and grabbed up Will’s instead, checking the clip. 'Are you taking the long way or what?'

Will could barely breathe. All the buildings around them looked the same, and the guide wouldn’t stop nattering in his ear about streets and directions. 'Keep your knickers on, would you?' he retorted. 'Three clicks out.'

Duo ignored his answer anyway. He had his pocket com out. 'This is Shadow, come in, Base. Base, come in. Base, this is Shadow calling for Command.'

Will listened tensely.

Duo gave up after an interminable minute of silence. 'I think we’re late to the party.'

'You had nine damn days on the plane and you-- Damn it, I've been out with the villagers all this time, you could have warned me what to look for.' He reached back awkwardly and caught the guide by his shirt. 'There must be more than twenty,' he said in Turkmen. 'How many really? Where were they hiding, not in the village? Where were they?'

The guide didn’t answer. Another _chuh-chuh-chuh_ of shots sprung from behind, and Duo stumbled, almost falling over the front seat. Will yelled his name in alarm, but Duo was protected by his kevlar under-armour, and was already back on his feet, firing at the roof of a building as they sped past. Will saw a body fall in his review mirror.

'Where were they?' He grabbed the guide by the arm and shook him. 'How many? Tell me now!'

'Will?' Duo said.

'They’re waiting for us,' Will realised. 'For you.' The guide’s eyes were wide and blank, staring into Will’s. He swallowed, and let the man go. 'He set you up,' he told Duo. 'They sent him to camp to get you. The pilot who needed the cylinder.'

It took only long enough for Duo to shift into position. The gun went off, and Will winced as blood sprayed the side of his face. Duo opened the door and kicked the body out onto the road.

He climbed into the front then, and slid into the passenger seat next to Will, one foot on the dash to support the muzzle of his gun. He glanced at Will, and said, 'You okay?'

He almost laughed at that. He wiped his cheek and didn’t look at his hand after he’d done it. 'Fine. You?'

Duo clapped him on the shoulder. He was chewing fiercely on his lower lip, Will noticed, and his face looked flushed. He held the gun lightly, a practiced tender touch that would let him react with that lightning speed. He looked a little manic.

'He might not have been guilty. They might really have his family.'

'And I might be Pope one day. You make a decision, Stanley, you don't stand around for fucking ever and let someone else make it for you.'

Will took a sidelong glance at Duo again, as they left the residentials and headed out into the desert. 'I have no idea what we're walking into at base camp.'

'You do your job. We'll do it again when we get there.' Duo felt inside his coat, and came back with two full clips. He changed the one in Will’s rifle and handed it back, then fetched his own and loaded. 'You're with me. The only thing we have to do is protect the plane.'

'We have a team in that camp, Duo.'

'And if none of them survive, that will be very sad, but on the off chance they do, they're going to need a ride home.'

'I understand my priorities.' Duo didn’t settle again. He was leaning over the backseat to check the cylinder. 'Duo. You can trust me.'

Duo looked at him. They were almost there. Will could see the curve of the Osprey leering up behind a dune.

'You'll do what you have to, I guess,' Duo said. He crawled over the seat, leaving Will alone in the front.

'Damn it, Duo. I'm not going to betray you again.'

Duo’s face swam in and out of the rearview. Then suddenly Duo had his rifle to his shoulder and he was shooting again, just seconds before he was hit, flung back to the seat. If the swearing was any indication, he was all right, but Will couldn’t risk looking back to be sure. Men were rising up out of the sand with ample firepower, running toward them, toward the camp. It was barely sunset. Their guide hadn’t delayed them long enough, and the insurgents were making their move.

Will ducked low to the dash and drove straight at a man who ran into the road to block them. They hit, bouncing the entire jeep sideways, and Will slammed down the pedal. They shot ahead, and then they were in camp, skidding past tents and the empty perimetre watch. The camp was definitely under attack, and Will made sure his helmet was strapped as he wheeled for the plane. The Osprey was set to one side, and their lone car barely attracted attention away from the milling confusion as Will drove for it. He swung around to the back near the engine hatch, and threw the gearshift into park so hard they lurched forward. He scrambled to help Duo lift the cylinder out of the bed, and then up the ladder steps in the side of the plane to the engine. Duo ripped it open, hauling the cylinder into place. 'Tools,' he called breathlessly over his shoulder, and Will jumped to the ground and ran for the fuselage. There was a set just behind the cockpit. He paused long enough to get a view of the action outside. He saw bodies, most of them in dusty grey-- insurgents. There were Preventers down. More had taken refuge behind one of the hummers. He could hear them shouting.

He clutched the tools to his chest, and dove back into the heat to run them up to Duo. Duo was a tempting target, draped out of the engine like that and unable to use his own rifle, slung over his back. He was trying to do alone and in minutes what took mechanics an hour. Will couldn’t even help, not without a second ladder.

Then, amazingly, Duo emerged, smeared with oil and grinning ear to ear. 'That’s what a little prep work will do for you,' he told Will. 'We’re go. Let’s round up the men.'

 

**

 

'Commander took a bullet to the right femur,' Cameron told him. 'You never saw a guy bleed like that.' She still seemed shaken. 'We got a tourniquet on him, but it doesn’t look good.'

'The medic said you got it in time,' Will assured her. 'Come on, Markov’s not going to die in a place like this.'

They’d made it on a cylinder of questionable origin and insanely fast installation and no test run across hundreds of kilometres of Karakum Desert to the northern city Dasoguz and the extensive miliary base there. And they’d made it with only five wounded, and no-one dead. The Turkmeni army were going out of their way to smooth their sudden arrival. They’d already been given the use of two barracks, and mechanics were working on the Osprey.

'They’re setting up mess for us,' Will said to Cameron. 'Go wash up and get something to drink. You’ll feel better.'

'Yeah.' Cameron scrubbed dirty her face. 'Yeah. Come on with me?'

'Sure.' Will made sure their packs were zipped and stacked with everyone else’s where the Turkmen were offloading all their equipment. 'Let me just ask--' He bounced off someone who hadn’t been standing behind him a moment before, and Cameron steadied him.

It was one of the corporals from Logistics. He had a rusty streak of dried blood down his face. He said, 'Where the fuck were you when it went down?'

'Excuse me?' That stunned him.

The corporal moved into his space, bumping him back into Cameron. 'I said where were you?'

'Stand down, okay?' He stepped out from between the two of them. 'I was doing my job. Just like the rest of you.'

'I didn't see you anywhere,' the corporal went on stubbornly. They were drawing attention from the team and the Turkmeni military still standing around. Will tried to discourage their looks, but the corporal went on in a strident voice pitched for everyone to hear. 'Hiding in the corner? We've got wounded, and you could have been there doing your part.'

Will put his fingertips on the guy’s shoulder and moved him back. 'I was covering all of your asses,' he retorted coldly. 'Not that I have to answer to you.'

Duo was coming toward them. Oh, God. For the first time he honestly wanted Duo to be far, far away, not witnessing something that was bound to make him look like more of a loser than Duo already thought him.

Will made it two steps. The corporal grabbed his arm. He got out one word. 'OZ--'

Will threw him off. The corporal took a swing, and Will managed to block it. He ducked the next one. 'Don’t you dare pull that,' he said, and reeled back when the next hit connected, grazing his cheek and ringing his bell.

Then Duo was there. He yanked Will out of the way, and hit the corporal in the face. Twice.

The corporal fell with the second punch. He sprawled back. Duo shouted at him, 'What’s your name?'

'Duo,' Will said. He tried to take Duo’s arm, but the other man shook him off.

The corporal was holding a bleeding nose. He wiped his face. 'Sergeant--'

'What's your name!'

God. Everyone was staring, afraid to intervene. 'Duo,' Will said again. 'That’s enough.'

Duo ignored him. 'You're on report,' he yelled at the corporal. 'I want your name. You make me ask a third time and I'll make sure you're transferred to fucking Pluto, you shitface.'

The corporal climbed to his feet. No-one helped him up. He straightened sullenly. 'Coulter, sir.'

Duo seemed satisfied with that. He turned away. Will made to follow, relieved it was over; then Duo turned back. He said, 'I don't care if he's a fucking Nazi, he's your teammate. We're in this together.'

Coulter wiped his nose again. 'I can't believe what I'm hearing from you. You had a whole different attitude toward this bitch a month ago.'

Duo was on him before he’d even finished his sentence. He shoved Coulter so hard that he hit the men standing behind him, and they only barely held him up. 'This bitch saved your life,' Duo snarled. 'All your lives.'

'Duo.' Will didn’t let Duo shake him off this time. 'Come on. We have a briefing.'

Duo was shaking. That shocked him. Duo was literally shaking. He raked blazing eyes over Will, and for a moment, Will honestly wondered if Duo even recognised him.

Then Duo disengaged. He stalked off without a further word. Everyone parted to let them pass.

Will didn’t speak again until they’d left the hangar and the rest of their team behind. The night outside was quieter, cooler than inside, a nearly full moon beaming down on them like a beacon. He tried to remember that it had been a stressful day. A stressful week. That Duo had been fighting the heat, and that he’d killed people at close quarters only hours ago, flown under fire-- acted in all respects like the hero he was.

He caught Duo’s arm again, and pulled him into the shelter of an unoccupied van. He said, 'You didn't have to do that.'

'Fucking stick up for yourself then,' Duo hissed back.

That wasn’t fair. 'I was handling it, Duo. Now all they see is I'm a pussy and you--' He stopped himself with an effort. 'Thank you.'

Duo licked his chapped lips. His eyes evaded Will’s.

'There's going to be divisiveness between ex-OZ and ex-rebels,' Will tried again. 'It doesn't help to respond to it when someone acts like an ass.'

Duo freed his arm, and crossed both over his chest. 'I never cared that you were in OZ. That wasn't the reason.'

'What, then?'

Duo shook his head.

Will exhaled. 'Thank you. Okay? I appreciate it.'

Duo’s eyes dropped, and he walked away.

 

**

 

'Stanley.'

He woke with a fright, and couldn’t see anything. There was a hand over his mouth. Then it moved, curling down around his jaw.

Duo. Will sat up, rubbing his blurring eyes. He could just see Duo’s outline in the dark of the barracks. 'Hi,' he said, bemused. 'What’s up?'

He tossed Will his boots from the foot of the bunk. 'Come on,' he whispered.

He shoved his feet into them obediently, fumbling with the laces. 'Duo. Come on? It's--' He checked his watch, and managed to hit the small light on the face. '0330.'

Duo just gestured impatiently, and headed for the door. Will gave up trying to tie his boots, and hurried after him.

The base was dead quiet, especially the small section of it they’d been given for the duration of their stay. Duo was still fully dressed in his camouflage, though his jacket was open to the breezy night air. Will was chilled quickly, in just his undershirt and trousers, but he didn’t protest. Duo seemed to know where he was going. They ducked between buildings and passed what Will thought was a mess hall, all silent and locked down, and then they were on an old basketball court, the green-tinted cement black in the moonlight and run through with cracks by the hoops. Duo crossed the court and headed straight for a little concrete building. He glanced around once, and went inside. Will followed.

It was a set of showers and a few open urinals. They were empty, and from the look of things, a long time out of use. Duo locked the door behind them.

Will was fully awake now. 'What's up?'

Duo kissed him, quick and hard, and walked him backward toward a wooden bench along the wall.

So it was about sex. Or Duo’s odd, angry, dysfunctional brand, anyway. Will was almost disappointed. But Duo’s hands were warm on his chest and back, curling in his hair, and he didn’t resist.

Duo didn’t even wait for them to fully undress. He pulled Will’s trousers to his knees and pushed him onto the bench, and then he knelt between Will’s legs and went down on him like his cock was magnetic. Will couldn’t hold back a groan, and was embarrassed when the sound reverberated through the empty bathhouse.

'Oh, god, Duo,' he whispered. 'Your mouth is so hot.' He rubbed Duo’s shoulders, caressed his neck with his thumbs as Duo’s head bobbed up and down in his lap. He felt nails in his backside, and his legs began to tremble with a rushing feeling in his head. 'I'm not going to last if you keep doing that,' he said hoarsely.

Duo sucked harder. It wasn’t fancy. But it was hectic, and amazing, and Will slid his fingers through Duo’s soft hair. He warned Duo with a gasp, and closed his eyes against the stars.

He came out of it to the sound of Duo spitting. Duo wiped his mouth on his hand, and leaned up to kiss him.

Will licked his lips after. 'Let me do you now.' He palmed Duo’s cheek.

Duo nodded. His breathing was laboured. He slipped onto the bench in Will’s place, shoving his trousers down a little further. He was ferociously hard, his thighs flushed. Will knelt between his boots, and swallowed as much as he could.

Duo squirmed and held his head down, forcing himself another inch into Will’s throat before he stopped himself. Will ghosted his hands up the insides of Duo’s thighs, urging his legs as far apart as they could go in the confines of his pants. He grazed Duo’s prick with his teeth. Duo jerked and shoved at his head again.

'Shit, fuck,' Duo whispered tightly. 'Gonna--'

Will did not spit it out. He swallowed it, and kissed Duo’s thighs, his nose buried in damp, musky-smelling skin til Duo’s breathing evened out.

He stood, and fixed his clothes. Duo sat limply against the wall, his eyes closed. He looked exhausted, almost sick. Will touched his cheek again.

'Did you sleep at all?' he asked. 'Come on. You can still get a few hours.'

Duo nodded. He put himself back together with sluggish movements, letting Will wrap an arm about his shoulders and kiss him twice. Finally he stood, and shoved his hands deep into his pockets.

'I can't defend you again,' he said suddenly, and awkwardly.

Will knew what that meant. He kissed Duo again. 'It's okay, Duo. You never had to.' It was too dark to read Duo’s expression. 'Just because I don't fight them, doesn't mean I'm weak.'

'How am I supposed to know that?' Duo challenged him bitterly. 'Weak people don't speak up when they should.'

Will let him go. 'I guess you're just going to have to trust me.'

Duo just stood there breathing for a minute. Then he said, 'You remember the way back?'

'Yeah.' He looked away first. 'Good night.'


	6. Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Duo smacked his fist on the arm of the chair with a painful thud. 'No,' he growled, as low and as dangerous as he'd been when he'd shot a man in cold blood in a jeep in Turkmenistan. 'Not tonight. I don't owe Preventers anything, not tonight.'_

**AC 195**

 

“Shit,” Tucker hissed. “Get back!”

The corridor wasn’t empty anymore. Ensign Barton was there, with two armed guards from the flight crew. They’d discovered the camera was off.

Will tried to cushion the boy when Ortiz dropped him to the floor. Blood from his broken nose smeared over Will’s hands when he turned his head. It was cold, viscous, and Will flinched back from it.

'What the fuck do we do?' Tucker demanded.

'Shut up,' Sig hushed him. 'Let me think.'

'We’re going to get caught,' Will said. The boy’s face was so swollen already, skin purpling and split from their capped shoes. Will wasn’t even sure he had a pulse. His hands were shaking too hard to tell.

One of the guards must have heard them. Their rifles rose at ready, and then they were coming down the corridor toward them. Ortiz scrambled back and Tucker went flat-out running. Sig never made it that far; the guards were on them, and he was pinned to the wall with a muzzle between his shoulder blades.

Will stood over the boy’s body with his hands in the air as Barton came running, pistol levelled. At that, Will felt a kind of hideous calm. They’d been caught. He was almost relieved to know there would be consequences.

'Hold!' Barton shouted at them. 'Hold or I will give the order to shoot!'

The guards hauled Tucker back. Ortiz huddled next to Sig, his eyes darting frantically.

Barton moved a step toward the boy on the floor. 'Is he dead?'

No-one answered. Will’s throat was so tight it was hard to find his voice. He managed a whisper. 'No,' he said. 'But, it's bad.'

Barton’s pistol wavered between Ortiz and Will. He knelt slowly, his fingers to the boy’s neck. He licked his lips, and stood.

'Brimar,' he said to one of the guards. 'Carry him to the infirmary.' He looked back at Will. 'All of you are under orders starting right now to never discuss what happened.'

No, Will thought, just-- no, that was all his mind supplied. This was wrong. This was not what was supposed to happen.

Barton’s eyes flickered between them all. 'None of you were here,' he said decisively. 'It must have been one of the other Gundam Pilots. They did this to him, because-- because he was going to talk. He was like this when I returned 01 to the cell.' He nodded again. 'All right. If I hear anything, if any of you-- brag about it, or let it slip-- I'll let you hang for it. Get out of here.'

Will felt frozen. He couldn’t move.

'Go!' Barton ordered.

Tucker went. Ortiz hesitated only a moment longer, and looked at no-one while he fled. Sig tugged at Will’s sleeve. 'Come on, kid,' he muttered.

'Why would anyone ever believe they'd do this to one of their own?' Will asked weakly. He resisted Sig’s pull. 'No-one will believe you.'

'They're animals,' Barton said. 'Everyone knows that. I'll take him to the infirmary and no-one will say anything about how it happened, are we clear?'

'Let me take him,' Will tried.

'And give you an opportunity to make a conscience-soothing confession?' Barton snapped. He stepped closer, right over the boy’s body, and pushed Will back to the wall. 'There is far more going on at this base than your petty little grudge against a Gundam Pilot. This very minute Tsuberov is coming here with the sole purpose of eliminating General Khushrenada from power, and if that happens, we’ve lost this war. I’m not risking the disruption of plans you know nothing about just to get you the punishment you deserve. We’re here to win the hearts of the colonists, not act like thugs who beat up freedom fighters. So go to bed and forget you played any part in this.' He let Will go. 'And wipe your shoes. There’s blood on them.'

 

**

 

**AC 205**

 

The summons was waiting for him before he’d even finished checking in his equipment at the quartermaster. Merquise had sent his personal secretary.

'Word travels fast,' he said.

'I just deliver the request.' She handed him the note. 'You can change first. And shower.'

'Oh, I don’t think so,' Duo returned. 'I wouldn’t want to be accused of primping while the Colonel was waiting on me.' He made an elaborately courteous gesture. 'After you.'

She gave him a flat look, but she started walking.

It was late afternoon. The sun was right in Merquise’s window, glaring moodily even through the drawn blinds. The remains of a half-eaten lunch lay pushed to one side of Merquise’s desk, where they wouldn’t endanger his computer. When Duo entered, he took off his reading glasses and set them aside. It was going to be a lengthy discussion, then.

'Please have a seat,' he told Duo.

Duo did not sit. 'Are we going to be that long?'

'I know you're in a hurry, but yes, I need a few minutes of your valuable time,' Merquise said dryly. He waited, pointedly, until Duo did take one of the chairs facing the desk. The dark red leather creaked under his body weight. Merquise folded his arms over the desk. 'How went the mission?'

'I've been on better. We accomplished our goals, but we have wounded. I thought Markov already reported.'

'He has. I'm asking you.'

Duo wondered if Merquise put on that attitude in the morning like cologne or aftershave. Maybe it never came off. Certainly Duo had never seen him without it.

'All right,' he said. 'It fell apart. The plane was defective, and I've reported that problem before, so whoever signed off on keeping the model in active rotation can count dead Preventers on their name, so far as I'm concerned. The previous team left us a mess, and we didn't make good contacts with the natives.' He chewed the inside of his cheek, considering his next words. Merquise wasn't taking notes, wasn't blinking. 'We got surprised,' Duo said. 'We shouldn't have been.'

For a moment, just a moment, Merquise's cool blue eyes dipped away. 'Did you know that Commander Markov is recommending you and Stanley for commendations?' he asked then. 'For valour. Of course he's also recommending putting you on report.'

'What?' His mind went blank. 'What did I do?'

'You assaulted a fellow agent.'

'The corporal?'

'Yes, the corporal. Don't play games with me. It diminishes us both.'

Duo didn’t like that. Merquise’s expression grew frosty. He made his next sally, and Duo straightened in his chair for the attack.

'It's becoming increasingly difficult for anyone to work with you. I'm trying to understand why.'

'I don't agree with your characterisation.'

'Explain that to me, Maxwell. Because you've displayed temperament problems for months, escalating steadily since your suspension. I look through your file and I find evidence of issues going back almost to your first week. I'd call that difficult to work with. And you would, too, if it were another agent behaving as you have.'

'I'm not.' He looked at the wall to stop himself from letting anything else out, and realised he was gripping the arms of the chair so hard his knuckles were going white. Temperament problems, was that it? Make a peep out of turn and every damn one of them was ready to reach right for the only excuse any of them had ever needed to make trouble. Us And Them. Whether it was OZ or the rebels getting noisy, it was always someone, and he was so tired of trying to stand on the bridge between. He wasn’t stupid; he knew why Merquise thought he should be above it, but he didn’t have the luxury of a desk job where he could keep his feet out of the mud. They kept wanting to ride him to the wall with the same old arguments, and his back was to the corner. His back was to the corner.

Hell of a way to live. He didn’t know what you were supposed to do when the functioning part of you only showed up when the bullets flew, when it was do things right or die. Fight, and he turned on everything important. Outside-- outside hadn’t mattered because there’d been no outside. If Merquise took that away from him, he didn’t know what he would do.

'Have you seen someone?' Merquise asked, more gently.

It took a weirdly long time to parse that. Duo sucked his lower lip between his teeth, and exhaled. 'I don't appreciate the assumption.'

'I don't appreciate having to explain to commanders that your skills out-value your attitude problems.' Merquise paused. 'Everyone in this department has been reeling, Maxwell. Three of my more stable agents are in counseling now. There's been loss after loss after loss. Why are you the only one in the group who feels nothing?'

That seemed to come out of left field. 'I don’t understand,' Duo said slowly.

'Were you even aware? Thailand. The riots on L3. The hurricane. Now this mess in Turkmenistan. The casualties from just this section are in double digits.'

'Of course I was aware. I was there when half of them died.'

'That's difficult to believe. There's not even a hitch in your stride.'

Duo stared at him. Finally, he said, 'I don't know what you want from me. You want me to rend my garments and rub ashes on my face?'

'That's insensitive even for you.' Merquise pursed his lips, then said, 'I'm concerned about your relationship with William Stanley.'

'That's not your damn business, _sir_.'

'It is when I've got to sort out problems like this.'

'What problem?' His voice cracked, but it was his hands trembling that he noticed, and he clasped them between his knees. 'I'll take the warning to heart. I'll work on my temper. And I won't be on a team with Stanley again.'

'You'll be on a team with whomever you're assigned. And if you can't keep yourself together I'll order a psych eval. For you and for Stanley. You're correct that your relationship is none of my concern, but neither of you is behaving in a healthy manner and if it continues-- I'd prefer not to have to transfer anyone out.'

'I don't think I deserve this.'

'Maybe not.' Except he was deadly serious, and they both knew it. Merquise propped his chin on his hand. 'Tell me what you think the appropriate action might be.'

'You've had your little come-to-Jesus talk. I promised to behave. As far as I'm concerned, this is over.'

'Take a few days to get your head on straight, Sergeant.' Merquise went icy. 'I don't want to see you in the building until you have.'

He licked his lips again. His throat was so dry. 'Are you implying official punishment if I show my face in my own workspace? What the hell? I didn't even start it!'

'As senior officer, you set the standard. A very poor standard recently. I won't have prima donnas under my command.'

'Better avoid the mirror then.' He was smart enough to drop it to a mutter, but it still slipped out past his internal censors.

Merquise heard it. 'Out.'

Duo stared at him furiously. But only for a moment. He rose, and let himself out. He left the door hanging open behind him.

 

**

 

Will’s muscles resisted lifting his duffle of body armour up into his locker. The long plane trip home had left him sore and tired. He wanted to finish unpacking as quickly as possible, and then head over to Duo’s. It wouldn’t be dark until late, but if he stopped for take away first, then by the time they finished eating it might be late enough that Duo would let him stay over.

The door behind him opened. Will glanced up the aisle. It was Instructor Yuy. Will hadn’t seen him since the phone-sex thing, but it was the first thing he thought of. His face turned hot instantly.

An awkward head-bob seemed to be the most Yuy could manage in greeting. He said, 'You know where Duo is?'

Will occupied himself with changing out of his camis and into a casual sweat suit. 'No, sir. I mean, I think he went home.'

'Oh.' Yuy hesitated without coming in any further. 'Are you going to see him?'

It wasn’t an easy question to answer. Yuy obviously already knew who Duo was sleeping with, if he bothered to ask at all, but there was a difference between implication and-- 'I don't have to,' he said.

Yuy blinked. 'Was that yes or no?'

'It was I don't know.' Well, that was embarrassing. 'Are you?'

'Not if you are.'

Will reddened again. 'I won't. Okay? I-- try not to get in the way.'

'I know. You can go. I’ll see him later.' Yuy still hovered by the door as if maintaining a good position for escape, coincidentally blocking Will’s only avenue of flight. He was shy, everyone knew, like they knew that he relied on his friends to do the talking-- friends like the one they were tripping over the privilege of seeing first.

Will tucked his tee shirt into his pants, and tied the string tight. 'Please. He needs a friend now. Go.'

To his relief, Yuy accepted that. 'Thanks.' He turned to go; but before Will could relax, he was turning back. 'Did it go all right? Usually he comes to see me and we talk about it.'

'It went... it was kind of a disaster.' Putting it mildly. Duo hadn’t even talked to him on the trip back, and he’d spent the flight sleeping as obviously as possible. 'It all went to hell. If Duo hadn't been there...' He put his wallet in his pocket, and fumbled slowly over his watch strap. 'We'd all be dead.'

'That's the kind of disaster he's good at.'

'Yeah.' Three months he’d been with Duo, and this was his first real-- talk, confrontation, maybe, with anyone who really personally knew Duo. If he could just make Yuy understand, make anyone understand, that would be something. That would be worth it. He said, 'I love him.'

Yuy's expression was not encouraging. 'I don't believe you,' he replied.

'I--' Will inhaled, hesitated. ''Well, you're wrong.' He couldn’t marshal better arguments than that, his gut contracting on the verge of an emotional cramp. He redid his watch strap twice before realising it only made him look like an idiot. He stopped playing and put his hands in his pockets. 'I guess there's not much either one of us can do about that but wait and see.'

And God knew why, but that made Yuy move. He left the door and ventured close to Will, his footfalls silent on the tile that squeaked for every other human being. 'Wait and see what.'

'Which of us is right.' Yuy was taller than him, looking down with eyes a dark, disapproving blue. He was a handsome man, too good-looking for his constantly grim expression. Will was not the only person who found him intimidating. But Duo didn’t. Duo liked him, and Duo trusted him. Duo loved him. Duo smiled for Heero Yuy.

'Is it because I was OZ, or because I'm not one of you?' Will asked him.

'Does the distinction matter?' Yuy took in a breath, and let it out in a silent sigh. Then he dropped a bomb on Will’s world. 'You're not the first.'

'The first what?'

'OZ. Enemy.'

Like a punch to the gut. A blow of a deep, aching sadness for Duo. Stuffing fistfuls of salt into a long unhealed wound. He didn’t disbelieve Yuy; he couldn’t.

It took forever to find his voice. 'Maybe I'll be the last.' Yuy looked away, and Will grabbed for his arm, completely forgetting himself. 'He's going to get well. Some day.'

'He shouldn't get worse first.'

'Maybe-- maybe he's not. Really. Maybe this is just part of the process. He's fighting some very large demons.'

'You're one of the demons. Aren't you?'

Yuy knew, then.

Nor was he looking at Will, just at the lockers. 'I remembered you, when you first transferred here. He didn't seem to notice.' He lifted his hand to his lips and chewed a hangnail. 'I'm not talking just about Lunar Base. He keeps going back to what hurt him. Like a little boy with a scab.'

'Why didn't any of you who were his friends help him stop?'

'There are no steps between "help" and "make" with Duo.'

'He needs things. He's starved for them.' He didn’t know how Yuy could fail to see it. 'Letting him run himself ragged because you don't want to make him angry is like... it’s like handing him a loaded gun.' He pulled Yuy’s hand away from his mouth. 'So it’s all my fault?'

'I didn't say that. I said you weren't helping him. Even if that's all you want to do.'

He let go, at that. 'What do you think I want from him?'

Yuy shrugged his broad shoulders slightly. 'Redemption. Forgiveness. Whatever it is, he doesn't have it to give.'

'Maybe I did want those things in the beginning.' It wasn’t an easy admission. 'I know he can't give them to me. But, sir, maybe I can give them to him.'

Yuy looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time. He didn’t have an immediate answer for that, and Will allowed himself a moment of hope.

'I want to,' he repeated.

In the end, Yuy said only, 'Don't hurt him worse.'

'I'd die before I did that,' Will swore.

Yuy nodded once. 'You go see him tonight. I’ll go tomorrow.'

'Thank you.'

Will let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding, as the locker room door shut behind Yuy. That was acceptance, of a sort, wasn’t it? Permission?

He didn’t know.

Duo’s little house on the beach wasn’t the brightest or the best kept. Will thought perhaps that Duo could have afforded better, but it was like Duo to settle for something lesser if he thought some aspect of it was worth the bother. It was well outside of town and a significant commute to HQ, but it sat directly on the water. Duo had never said if that was why he’d bought it, but Will had often seen him sitting on his little porch, staring out at the sunlight on the waves. That was where he was when Will arrived. He sprawled deep in an old wooden chair, shirtless in the still summer air, his bare feet propped on the sand-scattered boards. A six pack of beer sat at his side, two of the cans already missing, a third drooping from Duo’s fingers.

Will climbed the creaking steps, and leaned against a pillar of peeling white paint. 'Hey,' he said softly. 'One of those for me?'

Duo’s face was still in the way it got when he was surprised. It took him a beat to recover, too. Then he said, 'Sure,' and gestured vaguely at another of the wooden chairs. Will sat, and took one of the cans. It was a cheap light beer. Will thought it might be the same six pack Duo had had in the boot of his car, that first night. It wasn’t any cooler now, and he put it down after only two sips.

Duo said, 'Usually it's Wufei who comes to make my foolishness known to me.'

One of the Gundam Pilots. Will had never met him, but he knew the name. Everyone in Preventers knew the Pilots, even if Duo was the only one who regularly went into the field. 'I didn't come for that.'

'Which leads to a question.'

'I'm worried about you.'

Duo snorted. He pulled a new can from the pack, and drank deeply.

'You seem not-okay,' Will said.

'Rest your pretty head on my account. I'm fine.'

'I care about you.' A dragonfly went buzzing past them, landing on the porch rail. Duo’s eyes followed it. 'I worry,' Will said.

'God, you have no sense of self-preservation, do you?'

Maybe not. He pressed on anyway. 'I think you're worth the risk.'

'Yeah, well, I'm not.' Duo drank from his can and slid lower in his seat. His legs were slim and tan under his wrinkled shorts. His other hand lay over his stomach, and Will wondered if he knew it was the protective gesture it looked like. There were large bruises in faded purple on his chest, where he’d been shot in his kevlar.

Will sipped his warm beer again. 'I hate when you say things like that.'

'Stanley, what are you doing here really?'

'I don't lie to you, Duo.' He’d managed half the can. It tasted sour, soapy, and his stomach didn’t much like it. He cradled the can between his palms. The sound of the ocean was a soothing backdrop, somehow disconnected from the sight of water itself, brackish green and lapping up onto the sand. The sun was getting low and orange, painting everything with a thick black outline of shadow. 'Why don't you ever call me Will?'

Duo looked at him. 'I do.'

'You call me Stanley. Or Stan if you're mad at me.'

'I hadn't thought about it.'

'I have.'

Duo’s face was so expressive. He was tense and unhappy, turning his face back to the ocean.

'I'm not going to give you shit about it,' Will said. 'I just wondered.'

'You know what, I don't want to play this game. I don't want to coddle you right now.'

'I'm not asking you to. I don't ever ask you to.' Duo finished his can and set it on the other side of his chair. There were two left in the pack now, and Duo freed one of them from the plastic rings and popped the tab. Will made a face, and without even looking Duo said, 'Shut the fuck up.'

'You don't need me to say anything about it. You know.'

'I don't need you to say anything about anything, Stan.'

'So I should just go, then?'

Duo finished the can, and set it down. He stood, and unzipped his shorts, and for a second Will thought Duo was going to take a piss off the porch. He was wrong. Duo straddled Will’s chair instead.

'Duo,' he groaned. 'Damn it.'

Duo’s fingers paused in the act of unbuckling Will’s belt. 'Is there some particular reason touching me sucks so much for you?'

Because they only fucked when Duo was mad, and Will was sick of it. But he didn’t say so. He let Duo open his belt, and then his flies. Duo freed him from his undershorts and squirmed forward to touch the heads of their cocks together. Duo’s open mouth brushed down his neck, and he shivered.

Why did it have to feel so damned good and so damned wrong at the same time? Why was he so fucking incapable of saying no to Duo when he got like this? Or even of asking for what he really wanted. It made him wonder which of them was the more willful victim. He’d thought it was Duo, because of course it was Duo, so unforgiving and so angry and so alone that he’d accept the touch of someone he hated. But every time they had any kind of sex, after just those few touches, that littlest hint that Duo wanted something from him, Will voluntarily disengaged from all that baggage and just let Duo take them in whatever direction he wanted to lead, because for a few perfect minutes he could pretend they were a normal couple. That they had a future. That they had, maybe, even a genuine connection. Love.

The porch creaked, and a throat cleared.

Will jerked in surprise and ripped his hands from Duo’s hips. There was a man on the porch watching them.

Duo smacked his fist on the arm of the chair with a painful thud. 'No,' he growled, as low and as dangerous as he'd been when he'd shot a man in cold blood in a jeep in Turkmenistan. 'Not tonight. I don't owe Preventers anything, not tonight.'

'Duo,' the man said, just his name. And Duo reacted in flat fury, clambering off the chair to go stomping inside. Will hurried to cover himself.

The man on the porch was a Preventer. Will realised that at the same time he registered that the man was Asian, and their age, and Duo had said that Wufei Chang always came to scold him. It seemed it was his day to meet all the pilots, and at complete disadvantage with all of them. Chang did not look politely away as Will, mortified, fumbled through dressing himself.

He levered to his feet, and wiped both hands on his trousers before extending one. 'Sir, I’m--'

Chang’s unsmiling mouth barely moved as he said, 'Would you excuse us, please.'

Will faltered. Chang made no move to accept his hand, or to in any way acknowledge what he’d interrupted.

'Tell Duo I'll talk to him later,' Will said finally.

Chang nodded, and with nothing more, walked right past Will to Duo’s back door. Will made it to the bottom step before realising he neither wanted nor had to leave. He could go into the house and wait. Duo would be in a foul mood after this, that was absolutely sure, but Chang would eventually leave. He might not even stay long, given the poor start of it. He climbed back up the steps and ventured to the screen door. If he stood to the left, he could just see into the kitchen, where Duo was.

Chang came into his line of sight, too, leaning on the countertop. Duo moved past him, and came back with a can and a cooking pot. He lit the gas burner on his stove, shaking the match to extinguish it and dropping it into a coffee tin.

'Sorry I interrupted,' Chang murmured.

'Not as sorry as I am,' Duo retorted.

'Want to tell me what's going on?'

'I know it's been a while, Wufei, but surely you remember what fucking looks like.'

'I know what it looked like on Lunar. Perhaps I find it curious you're so intent on a repeat performance.'

God.

'I don't want to talk about Lunar.' Duo slammed his pot onto the stove and all but ripped the lid off the can. Beans. He emptied them into the pot.

'This man,' Chang said. 'Heero says he was on Lunar. Is that not significant?' Then his voice softened. 'You're hurting. And so far as I can see, this man is hurting also. Or shall we talk of how your career is imploding?'

Duo whirled. His bare chest was flushed and heaving, his expression murderous. 'Oh, you are not Buddha, buddy, no matter how smart you think you are. You are not going to stand there and deliver me some sanctimonious load of wisdom from on high.'

'How many reprimands have you earned since you started seeing this man?'

'That is none of your business.'

'We're friends. That makes it my business.'

'Fuck you.' Duo rattled a drawer open and pulled a spoon from it. 'I don't owe you that shit.'

Chang didn’t answer for a long time. Will couldn’t see his face. He said, 'Maybe not, but if you're sleeping with William Stanley, you owe him.'

'What do you want from me?' Duo said. 'I mean what specific thing do you want from me out of this so-called conversation?'

'You need help. You should get some before you lose your job. Talk to me, Duo.' He moved then, and Will had the right angle, the perfect angle, to see how Chang laid his hand on Duo’s arm tenderly. 'We used to talk.'

Duo glared sullenly at his pot as he stirred it. 'I used to think you had something important to say.'

'I used to think you cared.'

There was no transition. Duo was stirring, and then he was throwing the pan against the wall. Chang flinched back, and so did Will. Duo turned off the stove, and then he finished his beer.

Chang seemed at a loss, his calm shaken. 'How many of those have you had?' he asked.

'Not nearly enough.'

'You should stop. You're an ugly drunk these days.' He took a half-step, then another, then paused. 'Maybe we ought to talk about Lunar.'

'I don't know.' Duo slid into a squat with his back to the cabinets. Will almost went in, then, storm the kitchen to wipe away the lost look hollowing Duo’s face. Duo closed his eyes, and his hands rested limply between his knees. 'I don't know,' he mumbled. 'I don’t know. I don't know why I can't let it go.'

Chang only dared a single step. Will knew exactly what he was doing, because he’d done it himself. Touching Duo somehow diffused his rages. Or it brought him to the boiling point, so that he could hit and move on. But Chang didn’t touch him. Duo stayed crouched in the corner, rubbing his cheeks, then gripping his braid in one fist. 'Maybe you need to see someone,' Chang whispered.

Duo drew a deep breath. He got to his feet, and fetched a roll of paper towels from under the sink. He began to clean up the spill of beans down the wall and on the floor under his small table. 'I'm fine,' he said.

'You're not.'

'I function. I'm making it. I went ten fucking years without a problem.'

'So what happened?' Duo wouldn’t look at him. He scraped at the floor with the towels as if it took all his concentration. 'Duo?'

'Thanks for the help.' Duo brushed past him to bin the brown mess he carried. He happened to cross near the door, and Will froze. Duo glanced, and saw him. He didn’t react at all, though, and Will doubted it a moment later.

'Is it your intention to take Will Stanley down with you?' Chang asked him. 'The story of the corporal in Turkmenistan has spread all over base. Everyone knows you're sleeping with him. And that you're suspended because of him.'

'Am I supposed to break up with the guy because there's a rumour mill? It's Preventers, Wufei, we only exist to shoot at people who didn't join us at the end of the war.'

'Like Order of the Zodiac.'

Duo whirled on him. 'He's not. You take it the fuck back.'

'He is. Or isn't that reason you're in bed with him? He told Heero he loves you. You're making a terrible mistake, Duo.'

Duo didn’t glance back toward the door, though suddenly Will wanted him to. 'He doesn't.'

'You know that?'

'No! No, he's the one who started this, he wouldn't leave it alone, and he's the one who-- who looks at me like I'm supposed to fucking know everything, but I don't, and I'm not responsible for him-- for his misconceptions about my place in the universe, but I'm not making amends, I'm not the one with some kind of agenda, and--'

Oh, God. God, he’d been so wrong. All this time he’d thought Duo knew what he was doing, thought Duo was in control, and he’d been wrong.

Chang turned off the stove. 'Have you been sleeping?' he asked quietly.

Duo licked his lips. 'I got some pills today.'

'From a doctor?'

'The chemist.'

'Duo--'

'You can't do anything. You can't do anything, Wufei.'

'No, but you can.' Chang closed the distance between them and put his hands on Duo’s arms, gripping him tightly. 'You have to take care of this.'

'It's not my _fault_.'

It still feels like my fault. From the beginning. How had Will never seen?

'No.' Chang embraced Duo, ignoring his resistance. He refused to let go. 'Not if you fix this.'

With a hard push Duo succeeded in freeing himself. 'Go away.'

'Duo. Take a vacation. Get some rest. See someone.'

'I don’t need a stranger to tell me what’s wrong with me, to decide for me when I’m good to go back to work.'

'If you don't do it because you want to, Merquise is going to order it.'

'Go away, Wufei. You’ve said enough for one day.'

'You can call me,' Chang tried one more time. 'I’ll stay by the phone tonight.'

Duo levelled a look at him. Chang lasted longer than Will thought he would, long enough to risk getting Duo started again. But just when Duo would have spoken, Chang nodded. He left the kitchen, through the den and to the front. A few moments later, Will heard a car start.

'Come in,' Duo said.

Will opened the screen door. Duo leaned against his refrigerator until Will came to him. He reached out a hand. It was shaking. Will took it, and touched his lips to it.

'I honestly thought I was helping you,' he whispered, and was ashamed to feel the sting of wet starting behind his eyes.

Duo yanked his fingers free. 'Christ. You’re dumping me.'

'You used to be a happy guy.' He swallowed against the scratchy feeling in his throat. 'You were even friendly to me until you recognised me. Now you're angry all the time. I did that to you. Your friend was right. Maybe you should see someone.'

'What, like a therapist?' Duo’s mouth twisted in a parody of a smile. 'You probably have a diagnosis all ready to go. Why don't you just lay it on me? You're the one who has me all figured out, yeah?'

'No. I don't. Not really.' He recaptured Duo’s fingers. 'It's like... seeing me tore open an old wound and it's festering again. What...' He cleared his throat painfully. 'What we did to you was unforgivable. I know that now. But maybe you need to let it go. For yourself.'

Duo was staring at him. Will squeezed his hand, and Duo moved away from it, like a reflex, like a wince. He looked away.

'I’m sorry,' Will whispered. 'I just-- I do love you, Duo. I wanted to help you get well.'

'Shut up. Please, for god's sake, for once just shut up.'

He did.

It took Duo a minute to work up to it. His breathing was erratic, edging into hyperventilation, and his hand was sweating and clenching in Will’s grip. 'You think it's all about you?' he choked out at last. His eyes were wild when they locked onto Will’s. 'You think you're so unique in my universe that everything wrong with me is something you did? Well, sorry to let you down. I was fucked a long time before you showed up.'

Will wiped his eyes. 'I guess I'm just the lucky one you've decided to work it out on.'

' _I_ decided?' Duo repeated aggressively. ' _You_ came after me. You came after me again and again, you followed me home, you wouldn't let it go! You're the one who keeps fucking bringing it up, Stanley, so don't turn it on me like I'm attacking you all the damn time. I would have walked away! I would have fucking walked away and never spoken to you again, but no, you had to purge your soul, you had to make up for your sin, and you sit there with that-- with that pathetic hang-dog look and tell me how you worry for me? Fuck you, you son of a bitch!'

He was crying now and unable to stop it, but so was Duo. Will brushed tears carefully from Duo’s flushed cheeks with his thumbs, and cradled Duo’s jaw. 'Should I stop trying with you?'

Duo turned his face away. 'Don't ever fucking touch me again.'

His turn to flinch. 'Okay.'

'Good.'

He’d thought he was prepared for it. From the beginning, almost. It was devastating to hear. Physical pain, like strangulation, airlessness. Every cell of his body wanted Duo to take it back. He didn’t have any voice left, but he tried to say, 'I hope it gets better for you.'

Duo came after him, then, the way he did, getting right in Will’s face. 'You know what I hate most about you?' he demanded. 'Anyone can be driven to do something awful, even something evil. Those men you were with that night, yeah, what they did was horrible, and if I ever met them in a dark alley, maybe none of them would walk away. But you. It takes a special kind of moral weakness to just stand still and watch. You say you didn't hate me. You say you wish you'd been braver. It wasn't about bravery. All you ever do is stand around waiting for someone to tell you do something you don't believe in, that you wish you didn't have to do, and every single damn time you do it. You're worse than a bully, because everyone knows what a bully looks like. You're someone who knows better, and does it anyway.' He was trembling; Will could feel it, they stood so close. 'You make me feel sick.'

He stumbled back step by step, until he hit the table. There was a buzzing in his head, trying to drown out Duo’s words. He rubbed at the centre of his forehead, looking everywhere but at Duo. 'I'm sorry. You're right. You're absolutely right.'

Duo blinked like a man just coming awake. His mouth fell open. Will waited, but he didn’t say anything else.

'Good-bye,' he whispered, and fled.

 

**

 

One of the night janitors let him back into the building. He didn’t know why he hadn’t gone home, except he hadn’t wanted to sit in an empty place surrounded by things that didn’t mean anything to him. He sat at his desk for a while, and then he walked. All the halls were on dim, the private offices black. He wandered two floors, and then down into the basement pool.

He’d used to think about what would make someone take his life. Sig had, only a few months after the end of the war. He'd wondered then what had gone through Sig’s mind, the final moments, maybe the weeks and days leading up to it. How the idea had come to him, how he’d decided when, and where, how to do it. Now that it was his turn, it was all so natural. He turned on the whirlpool heater, to warm it. He went to the showers, then, and searched through the lockers until he found someone’s shaving kit. It took a while to prise the plastic apart and remove the razor. He stripped his uniform and climbed into the whirlpool in just his undershorts. After that, he closed his eyes and didn't think of anything at all.


	7. Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _'What other choices are there? I stay here and you-- whatever. Implode. I stay here and I implode. No.'_

**AC 195**

 

They made him walk it, though the elder apologised and called it policy. It was a long way. Pride was the only thing that kept him putting one foot precisely in front of the next.

There was a new guard, a woman, on duty outside the cell, not the man who’d always been there before. He wasn’t much interested in their little parade. She took longer than the old guard opening the cell, too-- there seemed to be new security measures. Duo watched surreptitiously, his head lowered.

They never sent the guards in first. They had the sniper rifles ready, and they pushed him through the doors. The sudden shove caught him off guard, and he stumbled. One of them actually came in after him, steadied him by the arm.

'Call if you need help,' he said, and swept a glance over Wufei and Heero, leaning against the walls on the opposite side of their cell. He backed out with a hand on his sidearm, and then the door swung shut, leaving them alone in the dark room.

Wufei moved immediately. He caught Duo about the waist before Duo could warn him, and he almost blacked out from the stabbing pain in his broken ribs. Whether Wufei helped him down or he just fell, he didn’t know, but when his vision cleared he was sitting on one of the wide stadium steps that circled the auditorium-like space.

'We thought you were dead,' Wufei was saying. 'Perhaps that's nearer the truth than we hoped.'

'Not dead yet.' He wanted to lie down. Wufei stripped him briskly, checking beneath the ties of the hospital gown they’d left him in. He took care of ripping off the bandage on his recently broken nose himself. 'They could at least have given us matching slippers,' he added, and pointed muzzily at Wufei’s feet.

Wufei wore an expression he didn’t much like the sight of. Satisfied at the extent of Duo's not-deadness, he draped the gown about Duo's shoulders. 'You'll chill.'

'How long?' he asked.

'Five days. No. Six. Wasn't it, Heero?'

'Six,' Heero repeated. He came out of the darkness somewhere to the left; Duo couldn’t see out of that eye, but Heero kept to that side, near enough that Duo felt his skin crawling.

Wufei examined Duo’s cuffs. 'Can you get those off?' he asked Heero.

Heero moved then, into Duo’s eyesight. Duo couldn’t read his face, but he knew what the clenched fists meant. 'You need to stay awake,' Heero said. 'Tell us what you told them about us and our mission.'

He made it to his feet on anger alone. 'I didn't talk.'

'There would be no shame if you were overwhelmed with physical force,' Heero said flatly. 'I don’t ask to accuse. I ask so that we can deal with what they know.'

'I didn't talk!'

'He said he hasn't,' Wufei interrupted, and guided-- pushed-- Duo back to the step. 'Even if he did, it hardly changes our circumstances. I want these cuffs off. If nothing else, they could serve as a weapon.'

Duo felt through his plait, Wufei helping when he struggled to raise his arm high enough. 'They took my picks,' he mumbled.

'Heero has a set.' Wufei turned, an imperious hand outthrust. Heero met Duo’s eyes with a strange reluctance; then he did indeed produce his picks, prying loose the bottom of his shoe and pulling the small wires from the seam. He sat to put his shoe back on as Wufei crouched over Duo, laboriously trying to manipulate the maglock. He flushed when his first attempt, and then his second, failed.

'I can do it,' Duo said.

'I've got it.' Wufei was brusque in his embarrassment. But he was right. Only seconds later, the maglock disengaged, and the cuffs fell open and dropped to the ground with a clang. Duo rubbed awkwardly at sore wrists, before Wufei checked those, too, careful of the splints on his right-hand fingers. 'Do you think you could use your hands?'

The adrenaline from the long walk from the infirmary was fading. He felt shaky, and pain was edging in, like smudges sitting on the surface. 'When I have to, yeah.'

'They accused us of doing this. We didn't.' Wufei’s dark eyes slanted up to Duo’s. 'We wouldn't.'

It took him a minute to process that. 'I know.' His throat was dry, and he coughed, sparking pain along his ribs again. 'Why would they hide it?'

'Someone screwed up, and someone else covered him.'

Barton, that meant. Duo didn’t understand that, right away. 'They were... I think they came while you were gone. I don't remember all of it.' It worried him that he couldn’t. It came in flashes that felt like morphine dreams—nightmares with no sense or logic. He freed one of his hands from Wufei’s, and pressed his palm over the ache in his groin. There was a pressure bandage there, and he had a vague memory of someone telling him about surgery.

'Are you all right?' he asked. He included Heero in his question, turning his head until he could see the other boy. Heero stared back without blinking.

'Nothing like this was done to us,' Wufei said.

'I'm fine. I’ll be all right.'

'Duo.' Wufei was every bit as grave as Heero, a deep line between his brows. 'Heero's right that we need you now. Tell us what you observed of the base. There's medical facilities, clearly.'

'I don't know. Yeah.' If he slumped just right, he thought he might be able to prop himself up. Wufei stood over him pretending not to be impatient as all hell, but Heero, Heero was just watching every move, and Duo didn’t want to show a weakness, or something. Just because Heero had rescued him once didn’t mean he’d make the same choice twice, not if he thought Duo wasn’t going to make it out of the cell on his own power.

'What else? Medical, other cells? How many levels? They've changed procedures, neither of us have been out of this room since-- you,' Wufei said, not noticing their glared communication.

Heero nodded once, silently. He turned away, abruptly, and crossed the floor to where he’d been when they’d brought Duo in. He sat facing the wall. Another time, it might have made him sad, or angry, even; Duo could only feel relieved to have a momentary reprieve from judgement.

'I don't know,' he told Wufei. He was tired, absolutely drained suddenly, and it was cold, with his chest and legs bare. He tugged the gown closed and rested his head. 'I think... I think... I don't know if I ever saw anything but the infirmary. I don't even remember where this happened. There were doors... I counted. I don't remember.'

'Rest,' Wufei answered, a long fuzzy pause later. His fingers probed carefully at Duo’s temples. 'I'll wake you in an hour. Rest til then.'

'Thank you.' He could barely keep himself awake, except for that ache of discomfort that was turning into a true pain. Not enough to keep him awake, not at all. 'Tell him I didn't talk.'

'You're an honourable man.' Wufei covered his eyes with a palm. 'None of us ever would.'

'I didn't.' In the dark behind Wufei’s hand he closed his eyes, unable to keep them open. 'They didn't even ask me anything.'

'Yuy knows you didn't. Don't you, Heero?'

He fell asleep before he heard the answer.

 

**

**AC 205**

 

He thought the ringing was part of his dream, at first. Then instinct kicked in. He woke up disoriented and uncertain, but with the phone in his hand. 'What?' he said, when he could form the English.

It was Wufei. _'You awake?'_

'Yeah.' Not really. 'What time is it?'

_'Seven forty-five. Take a second. Wake up fully.'_

That had his attention, and Wufei’s tone. He sat up and fumbled on his right side for a light. He wasn’t in his bed, as he’d thought, but on his couch downstairs. He had the queasy feeling that meant he’d drunk more than he was used to, and a headache that didn’t like the lamp very much. He didn’t think he’d gone to sleep more than a few hours before, except that vague memories of staring at a clock that never moved had the feel more of a nightmare than reality. He cleared his throat, and asked, 'What's wrong?'

_'Will Stanley's in the hospital.'_

It didn’t compute to anything. 'What?' he said again. Wufei repeated it. Duo rubbed his face. 'Why?'

_'He attempted suicide some time during the night.'_

He went numb. "He... Why would he-- he was fine when he left."

Except he hadn’t been. Duo remembered as soon as the words left his mouth.

 _'Nobody knows,'_ Wufei said, in that quiet, intimate phone voice people had in the morning dark. _'There wasn't a note. The night janitor found him.'_

"The jani--“ He was thinking in fragments and couldn’t match any of the ragged ends. 'At HQ?'

 _'In the pool.'_ Wufei didn’t say anything for a long time. Duo didn’t even think to hang up, but when Wufei spoke again, he’d forgot he even held the phone. _'Listen. I don't know more than that he's alive and he's in the hospital. I have a number if you want to call.'_

'Yeah. Okay.' He looked at the end table under the lamp, and picked up a pen and pad sitting on it. 'I can take it now.'

_'Five-five-three-eleven-thirty. That's the nurse's station. He doesn't have a phone in his room. They wouldn't talk to me, but they might tell you something.'_

'Yeah.' His hand trembled while he wrote, and he couldn’t read what he’d written anyway. 'Yeah. Okay.'

_'If you need anything. A ride. Anything. I'm here.'_

'Yeah.' He couldn’t think. 'I'll let you know.'

_'Are you okay?'_

'Yeah,' he said vaguely, not even really hearing. 'I've got to go.' He hung up with Wufei trying to get him back.

He could go over there. Santa Maria wasn’t far away. He ought to go. He should be on his feet, in his car, breaking all the limits to get there.

His body knew something he didn’t, though, because it didn’t move. He turned off the lamp, and stared at the slivers of light poking through his blinds. When his phone rang again, he set it off the hook. He lay down and covered his eyes.

 

**

 

'Stanley,' Duo said. He started to lean on the counter, then uneasily kept his arms to himself.

'Are you family?' the nurse asked him, not even glancing up.

He hated hospitals. Most of his memories of them were hazed with drugs and unrelenting bright lights, and the constant smell of sick overlaid with chemicals. An old man dozed in a wheelchair, unsupervised, in a corner, and a woman was asleep in the lobby with two young children draped over her lap.

'Family?' the nurse repeated.

'No.' He looked back at her. 'He doesn’t have any,' he remembered. 'I’m--'

Another nurse noticed him standing there, and came to the station. 'Are you Agent Maxwell?' she asked.

'Yeah,' he said warily.

'You can come back,' she said, and lead him through a pair of automatic doors labelled ‘Intensive Care’. They passed three glass-walled, blind-draped units before Duo spoke.

'Is he that bad?'

The nurse glanced back. 'This doubles as an isolation ward. He’ll be here until he’s discharged.' She halted in front of one of the units. 'Please keep your visit short.'

'Okay.' She opened the door for him, but didn’t follow him in. Duo watched her go through the observation window.

The man in the bed stirred. 'You came,' he said.

The room was white all over, made grey with the blinds drawn, and there was nothing to look at but the bed, not even any flowers, this soon after. Duo moved the single chair closer to the bed, and sat tensely in it. Stanley’s face was pale. There were bandages on his arms. When he noticed Duo looking, Stanley slid them under his sheet.

'You're an idiot,' Duo said. He cleared his throat, and looked at the softly beeping monitor. 'You didn't do it. Someone else did. You were wrong not to stop it, but you didn't do it.'

'You deserved better out of me,' Stanley said. His voice was a pale reflection, too, weary and mumbling. 'Even if you were the enemy, and they told us-- I believed you were a threat to everything I believed in.'

'I was. The same way you were to me.'

'That didn't make it okay. It still doesn't.'

He licked his lips. 'It's okay. Will.'

Stanley curled under his blanket. 'You'd say just about anything right now, wouldn't you? And tomorrow or next week when everything's back to normal-- what then?'

'I'm supposed to kick you while you're down?' he said, harsher than he meant to. He twitched the blanket away from Stanley’s wrist. It wasn’t hard to imagine blood there.

'You didn't used to lie to me, at least.'

'I don't care if you ever forgive yourself. But I don't think suicide is any kind of pass, either. You live with what you did, and you try to make up for it. That's how you make it better.' He licked his lips again. 'Don't die.'

'But we’re over. Right?'

'Christ, Will, we're beyond fucked up. What good does it do to pretend otherwise? Why did you do this?'

Stanley avoided his eyes, and then Duo was avoiding his. His throat was so tight it hurt, and his stomach felt jittery. He straightened an IV line and didn’t look to where it connected. 'I'm sorry for what I said.'

'You meant it.'

'I'm sorry now.'

'I heard you, Duo.' Stanley was staring out the window when Duo made himself look. He said, 'Do you still hate me?'

There was no easy answer to that leaping to mind. He didn’t know. Stanley loved him, deluded idiot who thought he was helping. Duo didn't know. Duo backed away from the bed and hit the chair, and hurried away from it. 'I'm gonna go. I'm gonna ask for a transfer. I'm just-- gonna leave.'

Stanley’s head turned. 'Don't,' he said. 'Please don't dismantle your life over this.'

'What other choices are there? I stay here and you-- whatever. Implode. I stay here and I implode. No.'

'I’ll leave you alone.' He said it a plea. Duo halted at the window.

'Shut up, Will.'

There was choked breathing behind him. He tried not to think about it, and then couldn’t think of anything else, and he couldn’t turn to look.

'Merquise will transfer me. He already threatened it. It'll-- help.' He rubbed his face, and pressed his fist to his mouth. 'Something has to help.'

'Damn it, can you do one damned thing I ask?'

'You never ask the right questions.'

'Why'd you have sex with me?'

'Because occasionally I have pretty ridiculous lapses in judgement.' With a massive effort, he faced the bed again. Stanley was looking at him, an obscure confusion, a frown of some kind of pain lining his eyes. Duo said, 'I don't know. It... hurt both of us, I guess. Maybe I thought that was the best I could get.'

'Was it worth it?' Stanley picked at his sheet. 'Fucking the dirty Ozzie.'

It was obviously meant to carry venom. It didn’t. It sat awkwardly between them, a weapon Stanley was too far beaten to properly use. Stanley’s teeth bit into his lip. Lamely, listlessly, he said, 'I'm sorry.'

Duo put his hands in his pockets and curled them. 'You get out of here, and we'll talk about it.'

'Yeah.' Stanley nodded. 'Thanks for coming.'

He ducked his shoulder to the door. It opened under the pressure on silent hinges.

'I'm not a bad person,' Stanley added suddenly. 'I was eighteen years old. More scared than anything else--' A beat faded into the noise of the vitals monitor. 'Once I understood what we were really doing.'

Duo turned back one more time. 'I know,' he said.

'I'm sorry, Duo.'

'Me too.' He remembered to breathe. The air felt soupy, thick in his throat. 'Look, just-- when you get out. We'll talk more.'

 

**

 

However official his suspension was or wasn’t, there was no way Duo was going to the office. Gossip about Stanley would have run through the building like wild fire, and that gossip was likely to connect up at Duo’s disgrace. But the determination not to provide any further entertainment only lasted through one day of brooding boredom confined to his own house. Wufei kept calling, and then Heero started too, leaving an awkward message on his mobile and then switching to one-word texts every hour. The one call he thought he might get never came, though he kept checking the log for the number.

He drew the line when Quatre called from L4. If his own friends were going to carry tales, he might as well be outside where he could honestly tell them he hadn’t had his phone. At dawn the third day, He drove to HQ, but took the outer circle drive, not the inner that lead to the office complex. He bypassed the lake, and parked outside the field and track.

On L2 he’d run all the time. Mostly because he was in trouble. But there’d been an exhilaration in it, and a kind of pride-- Solo had always said he was the fastest he’d ever seen. And after Solo had died and his legs had got long enough he’d raced with the older kids who did Free Running on the rooftops. He’d never learnt many of the stylised tricks and gymnastics of it, but he’d been quick and sure-footed enough to stay even, jumping from vents and windows and ledges without knowing until he was airborne where he was going to land. From running he'd gone to piloting. No Gundams, these days, and not a lot of the freedom that had brought him. The track was a monotonous substitute, but it was lonely, only an hour into the daylight, and that was something.

He was sweating hard and almost out of water when someone finally did interrupt him. One of the company cars came from the direction of the offices, and parked in the little lot next to his. Duo slowed to a jog on legs that were starting to shake from the exertion. He recognised the head of blond hair as it came out of the car. He drank the rest from his bottle and clipped it back to his belt, and crossed the grassy lawn rather than follow the track all the way back.

'I’m not going inside,' he said, pre-empting Merquise’s greeting. 'I just came to use the track. Word is I’m persona non grata, and all.'

Merquise was in uniform—dress uniform, Duo noticed, and couldn’t think of a reason why he would be. Merquise closed the last few yards between them. 'Got a minute?' he asked.

'Yeah.' Duo saluted half-heartedly, and wiped his face on his sleeve. 'I’m not really dressed for--'

Merquise shook his head. 'Not here. Let's go for a walk.'

He was surprised by that. They already had absolute privacy. But Merquise seemed to be waiting for him to agree, for once, so he made a vague gesture back the way he’d come, toward the lake. There were some trees there, if Merquise was looking for cover. The taller man slowed his gait to match Duo’s, and they walked.

Merquise didn’t break the silence until they’d reached the water’s edge and had no-where further to go. He removed his sunglasses and faced Duo, who found himself tensing.

'William Stanley succeeded in a second suicide attempt this morning,' he said.

Just blunt like that. Quiet. Duo stared at him.

'I thought you'd prefer to hear it away from the office.'

Everything went weird and hollow-sounding, as if he’d stepped outside himself. He didn’t even think of asking it, but his voice went on without him, low and flat. 'How'd he die.'

'He used his service revolver. Apparently he wasn't taking any chances this time.'

He felt a jot of sickness, and then Merquise was touching him, a large hand on Duo’s shoulder. 'I'm sorry.'

Merquise blurred and Duo blinked until his eyes cleared.

'I'm sorry,' Merquise repeated. He squeezed. 'I know he cared about you.'

'You don't know anything about either of us.' He moved, and that was like speaking, his body working without any conscious direction at all.

Merquise dropped his hand back to his side. 'Perhaps not.'

Duo rubbed his mouth. He couldn’t think, except for that-- all those calls he hadn’t answered, God, had they been trying to reach him? No. No, Merquise said it was just this morning, and that meant while he’d been out here running like an idiot, and-- 'Why wasn't he on suicide watch?' he demanded harshly.

'What makes you think he wasn't?'

'Then how'd it happen? What the fuck is wrong with you people?'

'He was off duty.' Merquise watched him warily. 'Forensics puts his time of death at around five this morning. The hospital discharged him, Duo.' He said it carefully, not dispassionately. 'The assumption was he'd been seeing someone. And that perhaps that someone would be present on off duty time.'

Duo turned on him. 'You don't get to fucking blame me for this, I don't care who you are or what rank you have.'

'No-one's blaming you. No-one's holding you responsible.'

He wanted to pursue it, almost did, but he lost the thread of it. There was a bench a few yards away. He sat on it. The metal slats were hot under his bare thighs. It was an odd time for it, but suddenly he was aware of all the sound around them—a buzzing from all over that was probably insects, and the noise of a little breath of breeze through the tall grasses in the meadow behind them and the branches above their heads, and chatter from birds, ducks on the water. Nothing was silent, after all, not even Merquise, who was breathing, going on breathing, and his uniform rustling as he came step by step to the bench and waited for acknowledgement. Duo felt his eyes brimming, everything went blurred again. He bit the inside of his cheeks until he could beat it back.

'May I sit?' Merquise said. Duo nodded. Merquise eased his way down with his hands on his knees. Then he slipped his fingers inside his coat, and brought out a sealed envelope. He put it between them on the bench and kept it from blowing away with a finger.

'What is that?' Duo asked.

'It was on Stanley's desk.' Light blue paper, and Duo’s name on the front. He’d never seen Stanley’s writing, he realised. The letters were slanted and poorly formed, but it was his name, all the same. 'I took it. No-one else has seen it. It hasn't been opened. It's yours.'

He didn’t reach for it. His hands clenched into fists at the thought of it. Note. Suicide note. People left suicide notes for their families, they wanted people to know-- why--

Merquise let it rest on the bench, and pressed his hands between his knees. 'He was in counseling. When he joined Preventers. He stopped when he was hired. Because we wouldn't take on agents with mental...' He never completed the sentence. 'We let it slide. The way we let you slide. Me.'

He sat there listening to all the noise all around them. 'What was I supposed to do differently?'

'Did you ever consider forgiving him?'

He felt a tear go. He wiped it away as it hit his cheek, as his throat clogged. He concentrated on keeping his composure, on forcing himself to breathe.

'For some of us, the war will never be over. Apparently.'

'Shut up,' he whispered.

Merquise did.

'Go away. Take that with you.' He pointed to the envelope without looking at it.

Merquise put it back in his pocket. 'I'll keep it safe for you, until you're ready.'

'Go away.'

'Don't be alone tonight.' Merquise stood then. 'I don't want to find another of these.'


	8. Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He wished there was going to be an answer. He wished he believed there could be._

'Hot and Sour Soup, House special Egg Foo Young, and Broccoli with Black Bean sauce,' Duo said. He twitched his curtain open a little further. '179 Cathedral Street. Listen, there’s a guy in a blue Ford sitting across from the house on the left side of the street. Have your guy deliver it to him. Yeah, the guy in the car. He’ll pay you. Thanks.' He closed his mobile and dropped it into a pocket. He let the curtains close, and resumed his seat on his couch.

It took half an hour; he was a long way for a delivery. But a half hour after his call there was a tentative knock at his door. He ignored it, and then heard it open.

Merquise came into the den carrying a bag. 'You owe me eighteen fifty-three,' he said, subdued, putting the bag on table. 'Nice trick.'

'I'm not a fucking stake-out,' Duo said, and turned up the volume on his telly. On-the-nines traffic news blared about a tie-up on Route 48. 'Wreck,' he added. 'You’re stuck here for a while. So sit down or find a hotel this side of the bay.'

'You're on suicide watch.'

He looked Merquise in the eye. He said, 'I'm not planning on dying tonight.'

Merquise cocked his head. He gestured to the bag. 'Are you sure? That smells toxic.'

Duo leaned over to search it for the broccoli. 'The smelly shit's for you.'

Merquise squinted at the window. It was just finally dark, at nine. 'Thanks,' he said finally, and sat gingerly on the sofa cushion Duo had left open for him. He silently accepted the carton of soup and a plastic spoon. Duo found a nature documentary about seals eating penguins or something like, and kept his eyes exclusively on his food and the screen as they ate.

A while later, at some point, Merquise rose and left the room. The food disappeared. Lights came on in the rest of the downstairs, the kitchen and over the back porch. Merquise came back to the couch after a while and handed Duo a glass of cool water. The seals became lemurs in Madagascar.

Duo said, 'I kind of hated him a lot of the time.'

Merquise turned from closing the windows. It was, Duo realised suddenly, rather cool; another storm was coming. He pulled his knees to his chest for warmth.

'Why?' Merquise had gone tense and tight. Duo glanced back at the television. 'He was a good man,' Merquise went on.

'Not always,' Duo corrected, automatically, and wished he hadn’t.

'No-one is good all the time.'

'Yeah.' He wiped his nose on his sleeve. 'That wasn’t fair. I know.'

Merquise drifted slowly closer. 'I don't know what happened between you, but I surmise it happened during the war.' His pale eyes moved away. He bent for the remote control, and muted the box. 'Declining to work with him is one thing. Was one thing. An affair, though.'

'It wasn't...' But he let it trail off. On the screen, a monkey leapt from branch to branch, its small hands clutching at a fig. 'I want you to read the note.'

'It's not mine to read.'

'Fucking read it, man.'

Merquise had it on him still. He’d added a transparent plastic sleeve between the morning and the moment he pulled it from his coat pocket. He offered it to Duo that way.

'You.' He wrapped his arms about his knees and hugged them close.

Merquise seemed restless. He took the envelope from the sleeve and traced the folded edges, the script on the front. He sat beside Duo, and tore the envelope open with his pointer finger. There was a single sheet inside. He read it, silently; he folded it closed again. When he finally spoke, he had to clear his throat first, and his voice was husky. 'Did you want me to read it aloud?' he said.

Making Duo ask for it. Making Duo shoulder the responsibility. 'No,' Duo answered shortly. He’d just wanted someone to read it, in case there was something-- in case Stanley had wanted something done, some special arrangement. Practicality, he thought. People who left notes thought of things like that. They thought of all the things they hadn’t said that they wanted to, they got in the last punches, the last good-byes, the last blame. Whatever Stanley had to say, Duo didn’t try to imagine, and he didn’t want to read. People who left notes meant what they said to be the last word. You couldn’t argue with someone who was dead. They didn’t want to argue. They just wanted you to remember something you had no control over, wanted you stuck with that for the rest of the life you were going to keep on living without them. He knew the pathology. He knew what it did to the survivors. Maybe Stanley hadn’t-- meant-- to leave him any kind of burden, but it would be, and right now all Duo had was a chance to save his own back, or the choice not to.

It was silent again. The lemur show was ending. Merquise sat next to him holding the letter, still waiting, maybe, for him to take it. Duo drew in a breath, and let it out through his nose. He said, 'I think I need to take some time.'

In the corner of his eyes Merquise nodded. 'I'll push the paperwork through myself.'

'Okay.'

'Do you have plans?'

'Not really.'

'Are you safe to be left alone?'

He switched back to the news channel. 'Yeah. You can go home now.'

'I don't think that's what you want.' Merquise finally folded the letter and put it back in the sleeve. 'You're alone too much.'

Duo wiped his nose again. 'If I'd stayed alone, he'd still be-- so maybe that's just the way it is.'

'Don't flatter yourself.'

'Either it's my fault or it's not. Proximate cause makes you kill yourself, not a decade of regrets.'

'His letter says otherwise.' Duo turned his head away, but Merquise laid a hand on his arm and gripped him like he was going to shake. 'William Stanley is dead by his own hand,' Merquise said harshly. 'Are you going to validate that by joining him?'

'I already told you no.' He was cornered on the sofa, was what, if Merquise decided it was going to get physical, and had two stone over him easy and a head of height besides, and it was a massive effort to just hold still when he’d put himself so out of position, curling up the way he had.

And Merquise was looking at him like he’d shatter under the slightest touch. 'He made me the same promise,' he said rawly.

He had a headache making his hands shake. 'Let me go.'

'He was on that detail on my orders.' Merquise was staring at him, and Duo stared back, not comprehending that, not understanding what it was about that that was supposed to be important. He'd not got his hand on Duo's arm, but rather his sleeve, then. His fingers tightened on the fabric, pulling it tight around Duo’s wrist. His knuckles drained to white. 'I personally washed him out of the Specials when he was eighteen. He came to me. He begged for a second chance. I transferred him to the Lunar Base. A month later I was out of OZ, and I didn’t see him again until he transferred here. I thought-- I remember thinking-- he was too soft. He wasn’t Specials material. He would never lead. He was a pleaser, not a soldier.' His pale eyes turned down, suddenly. To his hand on Duo’s sleeve. He loosened them convulsively, then moved both hands to his lap.

'Not everyone would call what he did a failure,' he said, a little more sanely. 'But for Will-- I was sure he'd find the courage when tested.'

The revelation, the timing; he just felt ill with all of them. 'What's wrong with you people?' Duo licked his lips and turned off the television. Everything went quiet except for the leftover hum of ions flying. 'Everything you do is just-- just so messed up.'

'The war will never be over for some of us.' Merquise set the letter very precisely on the sofa between them. 'You don't want to let go of it any more than I do.'

'This isn't my fault.' Choked whisper, the best he could manage.

'No. No more than it's mine.'

'Please just leave.'

'Not this time.'

'I'm not your fault either. Get out of my house.'

'I won’t--'

'Get the fuck out!' He moved, this time, sprang to his feet and shouted his bloody head off with an explosive burst of fury that left him almost blind. 'Fuck you and your tests! Was it an experiment for you, watching this go down? One more mark he needed to be in the special clique? Well, good for you, you proved that to everyone's satisfaction. And fuck Will anyway, because he never could say no!'

'Evidently he could, in the end,' was the quiet answer.

He wrenched open the end-table drawer. His holstered Glock was there and he threw it at Merquise, the extra clips too, and the pair of sheathed KA-BAR knives too. Duo eluded the grab Merquise made for him and turned his back when he hit the kitchen bar. He lost an elbow when Merquise finally caught him, but it didn’t stop him reaching for the sleeping pills and the aspirin out on the counter, the leftover antibiotics from the burn months ago. A loose cap scattered tabs on the floor under their feet. Zechs locked him down when he went for the kitchen knives, and did shake him finally, so hard his teeth rattled. 'Stop this!' Merquise commanded. 'Duo, stop this now.'

'Leave me alone!' He lost some skin freeing himself, banged his head good and proper on the edge of the refrigerator that stuck out. 'Take all of it and get out.'

'When you're calm.' Merquise forced his chin up. 'Are you?'

'I am not your responsibility.'

'Maybe not, but I'm making it so.'

Mobile. He had the mobile in his pocket still. He flipped it open against his cheek and hit the speed dial. Merquise looked away angrily. The line rang twice. When he heard the click, he didn’t wait for a greeting. 'I need you,' he said. 'There's someone in my house who won't leave.'

Merquise laughed bitterly, and released him. 'Yuy or Chang?'

Wufei heard. His voice, tinny and small in Duo’s ear, demanded, _'What in hell's going on there, Zechs?'_

Zechs plucked the phone from Duo’s hand before he could answer. 'We're having a disagreement about monitoring his home,' he told Wufei. 'Tell Yuy to come in if you don't hear from me in an hour.' He held the phone between them, facing Duo. 'Say goodbye to him.'

Duo dropped his head back to the fridge. He said, 'You want to help me, leave me alone.'

He heard the click. Wufei hung up on him. He closed his eyes.

Merquise palmed his face again, gently, this time. 'I'm here.' He closed the mobile, reached over Duo to put it on the counter. Both hands went to Duo’s cheeks, pushing his hair back. 'Let me help you.'

Abandoned him.

'Let me help you, Duo.'

He hit a point of surrender, sometimes. Not often. But he didn’t have any reserves, not now. Didn’t see a way out of the tunnel. Even the anger was gone.

'Whatever you thought you'd get from Will,' Merquise said. 'I can give it.'

Duo bent, and Merquise let him. The capsules that had spilled were the sleeping pills he’d bought at the store, blue and white all over his wooden floor. He picked up two, rolled them in his palm.

He said, 'I'm just going to bed. Stay. Go. Whatever.'

'I'll stay.'

He did. He followed Duo to his room upstairs, too, without so much as asking first. He took care of the blinds over the windows, and pulled the duvet down. Duo lay face-down on his mattress, and a moment later it creaked under Merquise’s weight. He wormed an arm about Duo and pulled him close.

Duo looked off into the dark beyond his bed. 'We never did this. You and me.' Me and anyone, he thought, and didn’t think of Will Stanley, staring into the darkness until his eyes stung from not blinking.

'We should have. You pushed me away and I let you. That's on both of us.' Merquise dropped a kiss on his shoulder and settled, warm and too intimate, against him. 'Duo,' he said, his breath just stirring the hair by Duo's ear. 'I'm sorry about Will.'

He’d forgot his pills. They were still in his hand, a little sticky now. He put them in his mouth and swallowed them dry. 'Don’t talk any more,' he answered.

 

**

 

He avoided the funeral.

Almost had another altercation in his kitchen over it, Wufei yelling at him about being a coward. He’d yelled back, just for the chance to scream at someone. It had been Merquise who’d decided it, hustling Heero and Wufei out the front door and saying he’d check in later.

They didn’t do graves in the colonies. Cremation was mandatory, and ejection. He’d always hated the death culture on Earth, and it kept him awake thinking about it, Will-- rotting away. He’d had a nightmare about it, even through the sleeping pills, and ended out walking so far along his beach he’d hit the boardwalk downtown. The humidity didn’t keep the crowds away. The carnival was already swinging, blasting music at deafening tones, bright coloured lights from the rides competing with the sunlight. He walked between the shops and bars for a while, an anonymous body in the hundreds crammed onto the sand. He bought a tea at Ai Mei Thai and sat at a table along the back wall to watch the mid-afternoon turn into evening.

He caught a cab letting out a pair of diners at seven and slid into the backseat ahead of a group of girls in slinky club clothes, ignoring their protests. 'Willow Run,' he told the driver. 'It’s off the highway.'

'What is that, an apartment complex?' the man asked, resetting his meter.

'Yeah. Grey buildings,' Duo said.

He remembered the lobby code, and sweet-talked the front desk into finding some boxes for him. He didn’t have a key, but he jimmied the lock with a credit card. Will’s apartment was dead, full of stale unmoving air. He tried a sink in the kitchen, but the water was off, too.

He emptied the refrigerator first, to turn it off. He put all the meat in a trash bag but kept anything that was fresh and still good enough to use, sheer economy of upbringing. The pantry didn’t have much aside from a few tins of vegetables and a mouldy loaf of bread. The crockery all looked generically cheap, but he boxed it anyway, and the small set of cookware too. There wasn’t going to be anyone else volunteering to do it, and he didn’t want it to get lost in the shuffle. It wasn’t much of an apartment, but it was Will’s, and he wanted it to be important, even if the things in it weren’t.

The empty fish tank he wasn’t sure what to do with, but he thought it would fit in the backseat of Will’s car. There wasn’t a television or anything, but he disconnected the laptop still propped open on the desk, and the lamp, a ceramic horror of beachy kitsch. He didn’t know the story behind it, but it didn’t match anything else. He wished he’d asked.

Some books on a shelving unit. The Preventers Operations Manual, which went into the trash, and a guide to the Bay, several years out of date and obviously never used. Novels. Duo didn’t know who ‘King Arthur’ was, but there were five books with his name on the cover. The pictures were all of people in ancient clothes, women with long blonde hair and men in ridiculous armour. He set those aside with the lamp, and the plaque with Will’s mother’s medal.

No-one had ever said where exactly Will had done it, but Duo decided to leave the bedroom for last. That left only the bath. He flipped the light and started with the sink. There were a few bottles, mostly empty, shampoo and liquid soap. He binned them in his trash bag if they were low enough and kept one never opened. The medicine cupboard was practically bare. Bottle of aspirin substitute, toothpaste, brush, floss. Nothing illicit. No meds. That left just the shower. Duo tossed a cake of soap and a nubbly old flannel. A shaving razor and a little mirror were there, too. The razor gave him pause. He brushed his thumb over the plastic lip of it. He wiped his forehead dry of sweat, and dropped the razor into his trash bag.

He was taking down the shaving mirror when he noticed the damaged tile. Cracked right down the middle from an impact point, when the rest around it were whole. He reached a finger for it on autopilot, and it wasn’t until he touched it that he realised what had broken it. He’d seen it a thousand times. The little hole in the middle was from a bullet.

Everything else registered then in a rush. There was no shower curtain. The overpowering smell of bleach. The stain in the grout down the back of the shower. He’d been wrong about the bedroom.

He sat on the toilet in a light-headed rush.

There was a hairband on the deck of the tub. A black elastic. He stared at it for a long time, not understanding what it was doing there. Will had short hair. No, it was one of his. Even had a few broken hairs tangled around it. He picked it up, feeling like he was swimming through molasses. He couldn’t think when he would have left one there. He’d never taken his hair out here, even to bathe. Will would have had to have taken one from his place. He wasn’t really imaginative; he couldn’t think why Will would have done that, except as some kind of memento, but it was such an odd thing. He couldn’t imagine what it had made Will feel. He took off the one he was wearing and put the old one on. Then he took it out again.

He said it in a mumble, feeling stupid. But sitting in Will’s place there was almost a banked kind of energy, an echo just under audio. Waiting. He said aloud, 'I’m not reading the letter. I just-- There’s nothing you could say that would make any sense out of what you did. I can’t believe you did this. I can’t believe it was so bad you felt you had to die to get away from it.'

He wished there was going to be an answer. He wished he believed there could be.

Into the silence, he said, 'I'm sorry.'

 

**

 

Zechs’ pager buzzed for a full ten minutes before he had the opportunity to check it. He finally got Une off the phone and reached for the offending technology. When he saw the message waiting, he threw the file in his hand to the desk without watching where it landed and whirled for the door.

He drove like a maniac to the hospital, swerving between lanes as fast as he could manage in the heavy rush-hour traffic. He parked in the Emergency Lot and went for the doors at a run.

Agent Kingsley intercepted him on his way to the desk. 'Sir,' she called.

'What happened?' Zechs demanded. 'You were supposed to be watching him.'

She straightened like a whip at his accusation. 'They got ahead of me, sir. I didn't realise what was going on until I saw the car. I followed the bus here.'

'What happened?'

'Chang went to Maxwell's to pick him up,' she explained. 'They were headed out on the highway. There were two other cars involved in the accident. The word on the radio is that an SUV spun out of control. They must have been right behind it.'

An accident. The sheer relief of that was so stunning that he nearly missed the rest of her story. He tried to keep his face impassive as he struggled to re-order his thoughts. He matched her posture, clasping his hands behind his back. 'How bad is it?' he asked.

'Sir, I'm not sure--'

'How. Bad.'

'Chang's in surgery. Maxwell, I'm not sure. They're not talking to me here.'

'They'll talk to me.' He strode away from her to the front desk and slammed his badge on the counter in front of the nurse there. He met her frown with a deep one of his own.

He said, 'Commander Merquise. Two of my agents are in your care. I want to speak to the attending surgeon about their condition.'

She turned back to her computer with a show of ignoring his badge. 'Are you family?'

'I am their commanding officer. I have every legal right to--'

'Not if you’re not family.'

'Your supervisor,' he said immediately. 'Not when you feel like it. Now.'

'Mother of Mary,' a voice behind him said. 'Chill out.'

It was Duo. He was bruised and bloodied on the side of his face, and his left arm was wrapped and hung in a blue sling, but he was upright and alive. Zechs forced himself into a deep inhale. He crossed the lobby, slow and steady steps proper of a man who didn't have a reason to go running like a worried lover, and met Duo at the doors.

'Should you be walking out?' he asked, restraining himself as well from touching, though he made a sharp-eyed exam of Duo's weary slump in the bright overhead lights. Duo wore jeans, but his shirt had been replaced with hospital scrubs. No shoes. His socks were mismatched. Zechs smiled jaggedly on seeing it.

'I'm fine,' Duo insisted. 'You wanna stop yelling at the staff?'

'They didn't cooperate.' Duo gestured at a line of chairs against the hall wall, and Zechs followed him to a seat. 'Are you all right?' Zechs pressed him. 'Truly?'

'I'm okay.' Duo rested his head against the wall. He looked tired. 'Wufei's not so great. Punctured lung. They're working on him.'

'That was my next question.' He let his hand wrest on Duo’s wrist. 'What happened, Duo?'

'I wasn't trying to kill us both, if that's what you're asking.' His tone was bitter. 'I wasn't even driving.'

'That wasn't what I was asking.'

'Someone blew a tyre. The SUV in front of us rolled. Guy in the left lane swerved to avoid it, and hit us, on Wufei's side.'

However inappropriately, he could only be glad that his gut-level assumption, on reading that page a half-hour earlier, had been so very wrong. 'Punctured lung,' he repeated. 'I'll see he gets the best care possible.'

Duo peered at him sideways. 'It's not like they're giving him substandard care because he's Asian.'

'He's a Preventer, not a prince,' Zechs retorted. 'I want them to treat him as if he were.'

Duo rolled his eyes. 'How many speeding laws did you break trying to get here?'

'At least a dozen in three different communities.' He was finally able to crack a smile. 'Duo, honestly. Are you all right?'

'Yeah. Honestly.'

He couldn’t help it; he was studying the man again, inch by inch, looking for the lie. But the injuries really didn’t seem to extend beyond the rapidly purpling bruises and small cuts from glass that speckled Duo’s cheek and forehead, and it was his wrist that was encased in a gel cast. Zechs reached to adjust the strap of the sling on Duo’s shoulder, and that was when he noticed Duo’s hair.

'You’ve cut it,' he said softly.

Duo looked away uncomfortably. He pulled the tail from behind his head and held it almost protectively in his fist. It was no longer than his shoulders now, held back with an elastic at the nape.

He knew Duo wouldn’t like it, but he did it anyway, gently loosening Duo’s hand until he could take the tail for himself. He brushed his fingers along the shorn edge. 'That had to be hard,' he said. 'Tearing something away to make way for the new.' Duo wore a faint flush, and he let go. 'I never had the guts.'

Duo twitched an almost-smile. 'I got pretty shit-faced first.'

'I believe it. When?'

'Yesterday. It just—seemed like time to stop--' Duo’s eyes roved the hall without settling. 'Stop carrying around quite so much of the past.'

'I understand.'

'I. I, uh, found a therapist, too.' Duo managed to look at him, that confrontational stare that spoke more about the fear underneath than it did about the courage to meet his gaze. 'I didn't do a lot of research or anything, but her website said she worked with vets a lot. So I set up some appointments.'

That surprised him more than the hair. He touched what was left of Duo’s tail, sliding his thumb from the band to the end. He rested his palm on Duo’s shoulder. 'Good,' he agreed. 'That's really good.'

'Yeah.' Duo cleared his throat. 'Well, you've got bigger problems now. Wufei's a crap patient. He's going to make it hell for everyone if he needs physical therapy.'

'Yes. Well. He's more Heero's problem than mine.'

'Lucky Heero.'

'He's got time. You've got time too.'

'Yeah. I saved up a lot of vacation days. Was thinking I ought to actually use some.'

'That's not what I meant.'

'I know,' Duo said. 'I'm dense, but I've got a fair grasp on metaphor.'

Zechs let his hand fall away. 'I'll be here. Whatever you need.'

'And whatever I don't but you think I need. Yeah. Thanks.'

'Duo.' He looked to the wall, unsure of what he wanted-- needed-- to say. 'If I've taken liberties, I apologise,' he responded finally. 'But in my own defence, you dumped me. And I've never truly understood why.'

'Because you were my commanding officer. And you hogged the bath.'

'Duo,' he said.

Weary eyes were waiting for him when he glanced. Duo shrugged his good shoulder. 'Because you should have washed me out of Preventers,' Duo told him. 'And the only reason you didn't was because I was blowing you. And the only reason I was blowing you was because I wanted to be out of Preventers, even if I didn't know it at the time. We weren't people to each other.' Duo's pale mouth quirked. 'Sorry, I guess. And for being too much of a tool about it. I guess I haven't been very nice to you. For a couple of years now.'

'It's been more mutual than not.' Zechs released a cleansing breath. 'About Will. We need to talk about him.'

'Zechs.'

'Because I am your commanding officer, Duo. I should have had you in psych evaluations, at the very least, the minute he told me you were sexually involved.'

'My private life--'

Zechs cut his protestation short. 'You have no private life when you work for the Preventers,' he said flatly. 'And my job as your commander is not to trust you to do the right thing, but to ensure that you do. Believe me that I’ve been asking myself why I failed to do that. I let my personal understanding with you affect my duty toward you as my officer. My duty to Will.' Duo was watching him silently. 'It is, perhaps, not inappropriate to-- share some of the blame for what happened to him.'

'You know what the irony is?' Duo fisted his short tail, then let it fall behind his shoulder. 'I get it now. What it feels like to stand by and do nothing. And all I want is to be able to tell him that, that I get it, that I-- I don’t blame him anymore.' He bit his lower lip hard enough to flush it dark with teeth marks when he released. 'Grand, isn’t it? Reaffirms my place in the centre of the universe. His death has meaning for _me_.'

'I think he’d rather you healed yourself.'

'Then he should have stayed.'

He covered Duo’s hand and held it.

A bearded man in scrubs passed through the Surgical Ward doors and aimed himself at their seats. Duo clambered to his feet, and Zechs rose as well.

'I’m Doctor Bajwa,' he introduced himself briefly, shaking Duo’s hand, then Zechs’. 'I was Agent Chang’s surgeon. It went very well. We reinflated his lung and set two broken ribs. He’s got a concussion, so we’ll keep him overnight, but we’re bringing him out of anaesthesia now. I’ll allow a quick visit. He did ask about you.'

'Go,' Zechs urged Duo. 'I’ll wait here.'

Duo nodded. 'Don’t terrorise the nurses while I’m gone.' He hesitated. Just a little more softly, he added, 'Maybe you could, um. Do the grave thing. I don't totally want to go alone, you know.'

'Tell me when,' Zechs replied. 

'Okay.' Duo turned again at the door. 'I'll be okay, Zechs.'

He nodded. 'I'm glad.'

'I mean-- you can go. For real, if you want.'

Zechs smiled. 'Go reassure Chang. I’ll wait for you.'


End file.
